Epic 25 by T-hawk

[timmy827]

@Sullla - yeah I'm repeating myself here, but I think the mined plains hill is better than settling on it IF you have plenty of food to spare, as this capital did.

Rough on those warriors running amok in the "safe" peninsula. I guess I did not realize how lucky I was at the time that Toku never crossed into my borders.
Also ouch on two Triremes, when it appears no one else got their seafood attacked until the AI's got to Astronomy.

Hanging gardens is the poster boy for wonders the AI ignores (clearly they don't consider it until they have an aqueduct, and how often do you build those for health before the Industrial Age?) 1265AD is pretty late but not the latest I can remember.

Awesome job with the globe/HE. I think my HE's have always been the conventional - find the place with 6 hills, farm as necessary to work all of them and never whip since it will regrow so slowly. I'm surprised you didn't get the Globe up earlier through using the whip/overflow/HR trick.

Also cool to see good use of SotL for bombardment. Map was well set up with the skinny landmasses; I didn't even think of that (not like I was close to researching them though). In a similar vein, I also ditched Macemen; never researched CS as I thought Vassalage would be more useful.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

finally a quiet day at work so I can read reports! I've started with yours because usually they contain a great mixture of details and original high-level play, I wasn't disappointed!

Regarding your initial settler dance, I always thought (hoped!) the blue circle algorithm would ignore tiles under the fog, but looking a the situation, you are probably right that it knows things the player doesn't. It ignores resources the player doesn't have the tech for yet, so I find it a bit strange that the fog didn't get respected in the algorithm.

You had incredible luck with your worker first gambit! Congrats on that, even though the worker was unemployed for so long.

Great move grabbing phants with Pink Dot so early! How strong was your "strong escort" actually? Because I had hurried getting a phalanx out early and was surprised to meet dog soldiers already, who didn't hesitate to attack me even in jungle! I'm not sure I would have been able to found Pink Dot in my game.

Thanks for reminding me of the "look inside" city option from BtS, which I had read about once but then had completely forgotten. Have to remember that next game!

Regarding the Hanging Gardens, I didn't mention it in my report, but I noticed they were still be available in 1230AD and tried to build them, but an AI finished them in 1265AD - the exact same date you built them.

You had 9 great generals by 1500AD, I had 10. Interesting metric to measure the amount of combat. My AIs were stronger still at that date compared to yours, so that might account for the difference in fighting.

That "ScreenShot Failed" screenshot, is this some Magritte type of picture?

Thanks for the report!

-Kylearan

[T-hawk]

Regarding your initial settler dance, I always thought (hoped!) the blue circle algorithm would ignore tiles under the fog, but looking a the situation, you are probably right that it knows things the player doesn't. It ignores resources the player doesn't have the tech for yet, so I find it a bit strange that the fog didn't get respected in the algorithm.

The blue circle is the same code as the AI's algorithm for site selection. I know from lots of experience that it can see resources in the fog. It excludes resources that are invisible due to tech, but does include resources that are visible but require a late tech, like wines. I'll almost always move one tile to a blue circle.

I also know that Sullla sometimes puts or leaves resources three tiles distant from the starting tile. I avoid this situation in scenario design, the potential to create a big payoff for a blind move. Unless the intent is to create variety between player starts; Sirian did this well in Adventure 13, creating several different but balanced options to move.

You had incredible luck with your worker first gambit! Congrats on that, even though the worker was unemployed for so long.

This is why The Wheel is my favorite starting tech. It never seems worth researching until needed for Pottery.

Great move grabbing phants with Pink Dot so early! How strong was your "strong escort" actually? Because I had hurried getting a phalanx out early and was surprised to meet dog soldiers already, who didn't hesitate to attack me even in jungle! I'm not sure I would have been able to found Pink Dot in my game.

The escorts were an archer a couple turns ahead of the settler, and a phalanx a few turns behind. The archer stayed strictly on defensive tiles. If the archer got killed, I was ready to turn the settler back and wait for the phalanx and another archer.

The other thing Pink Dot accomplished was forcing the Tokugawa AI to amass its units around that city. Pink Dot stopped any AI units from getting into the jungle river area, where I got commerce cities started soon with little worry of danger.

That "ScreenShot Failed" screenshot, is this some Magritte type of picture?

Heh, nah, that always happens. I take screenshots with Alt-Printscreen in windowed mode, to paste and crop in a paint program. Since that doesn't actually save the screenshot, Civ always thinks the screenshot failed.

@Sullla - yeah I'm repeating myself here, but I think the mined plains hill is better than settling on it IF you have plenty of food to spare, as this capital did.

Plains hills are almost junk tiles. The tile converts 2 food to 4 hammers. Granary whips do as well or better up to size 6. Plains hills are only useful if anger is the limiting factor on whipping, or for wonders. By comparison, a grass hill converts 1 food to 3 hammers, a better ratio than any whip (non Kremlin.)

Even 2-0-2 lighthouse coast or 2-1-0 forest or farmed plain is preferable to a plains hill. The 2 food can convert to the same 4 hammers via whip, plus the tile produces either the commerce or hammer on top of that.

Awesome job with the globe/HE. I think my HE's have always been the conventional - find the place with 6 hills, farm as necessary to work all of them and never whip since it will regrow so slowly. I'm surprised you didn't get the Globe up earlier through using the whip/overflow/HR trick.

Aesthetics/Literature/Drama all came late, I went up to Feudalism and CS first. Before the HE, anger was never the limiting factor as each unit whip was at least 2 pop. Then that Great Engineer popped at the perfect time so I took the easy way for Globe.

[Olodune]

Here's a look at my kill counts. About 600 total kills to 100-some losses, better than 6 to 1. And yes, that's zero macemen. Never needed them with plenty of elephants

I was curious enough to go back and check my game. My final kill ratio was only 3.82.

[Krill]

Plains hills are almost junk tiles. The tile converts 2 food to 4 hammers. Granary whips do as well or better up to size 6. Plains hills are only useful if anger is the limiting factor on whipping, or for wonders. By comparison, a grass hill converts 1 food to 3 hammers, a better ratio than any whip (non Kremlin.)

Even 2-0-2 lighthouse coast or 2-1-0 forest or farmed plain is preferable to a plains hill. The 2 food can convert to the same 4 hammers via whip, plus the tile produces either the commerce or hammer on top of that.

That's assuming slavery. There are other civics that under certain circumstances increase the usefulness of plains hills.

[T-hawk]

Well, there's that pesky Emancipation thing, but any other civics in that column are probably just your imagination. :rolleyes:

[Speaker]

Excellent report, and a well-played game, as always T-Hawk.

On reading that report, my main thought was, "there's a reason why we call them Uberphants in Multiplayer." Great read, thanks!

My thoughts exactly. Ivory should be a "balanced" resource. It is often the deciding factor in Ancient-Medieval era starts, especially considering it tends to bunch up, so one team can have 4 Ivory while the other has none.