Adv 38 - scooter

[scooter]

For this game I came into it figuring if I could pull off the Pyramids/Great Library combo, and manage diplomacy so that I avoided all wars, this game should be pretty easy to win. I would not be declaring war on anyone, and hopefully I would never be declared on. Problem is the capital's production was awful to put it lightly. I would fine out through exploration that stone was nowhere nearby, so I decided that Representation was so important in this game (I've never run so many specialists in a game of Civ before) that I was going to willingly stunt my growth early on in order to get it. I didn't see any other way than just slow-building the thing.

The trait combo was good for this game, though the Imperialistic settler bonus only applies to hammers, and because there just weren't many hammers, it wasn't quite as helpful as I had hoped. I later realized aggressively whipping the settlers would've been smarter, but it was too late by then.

So I started, seeing no reason to not settle in place, so I did so, going worker first and starting on Animal Husbandry. My hut luck was kinda weird in this game, my first two huts were Pottery (a nice break!) and 88 gold, but my next six huts were ALL maps, which was frustrating... I ended up scouting with workers quite a bit becuase they were easy to get (lots of food to build them), didn't count against my unit cap, and there were no barbarians to kill them, so that worked out nicely.

I had one funny/annoying moment early on. As you know there was a hut directly to the southwest of the capital. Well I sent my starting unit east then south, so instead of wasting turns going back for it I figured I'd send my next unit there, resulting in this picture:



Yes I missed the hut 4 tiles away from my capital!

I did get Pyramids in my capital, though it took me somewhere around 50 turns. I was even running citizen specialists just to squeeze out a couple more hammers, and I whipped the last 3-4 turns of it just in case. I doubt I actually needed to, but I wasn't going to chance it.

Early on I noticed the mountain range- is that typical for rainforest? I've never played any other rainforests maps so I'm not sure. Either way, when I started to realize it blocked off all the land to my east, I hurried down and tried to block off all the eastern land so I could settle it whenever I felt like it. I forgot to take a picture at the BC-AD switchover, but here's how things stood at 50AD:



I would have liked to have more than 5 cities but that's what I get for sinking 500 hammers in a high-food low-production city into the Pyramids. I'm 5th in score, though that would change very soon as I continued expanding, started securing more happy resources, and quickly became the tech leader.

In my game, a Hindu bloc formed, and finally in the AD years someone spread Hinduism to me and finally I had things nicely set up. The only non-Hindus were Ragnar and Victoria, which I could deal with. Oddly enough, Peter declared on Hammurabi at +4 relations, which nearly strained things, but I bribed them into peace as soon as I could and they never had another problem. I still can't figure out why he declared as they never shared a border or anything, anyone have any clue what may have caused this??

That war ended fairly quickly, but the one that scared me was Ragnar declaring on Hammurabi. Ragnar had the biggest military by a mile, and Hammurabi was my buffer between myself and Ragnar. My small military would make me vulnerable to attacks, but I quickly got Hammurabi to Friendly, and Victoria (my other neighbor) was almost always in a war with Cyrus or Peter (neither wars actually did anything in terms of cities, but they lasted forever) so she wouldn't attack me either. But if Ragnar managed to take a city of Hammurabi's that was bordering me, my game would probably be over because Ragnar easily had enough to wipe me out. I actually gifted Hammurabi a few units to help, but he was badly outnumbered. Fortunately, this saved me:



Getting overwhelmingly elected allowed me to use this to end the war, which helped. I even used it to give Hammurabi his city back, though Ragnar would later declare and re-take it, but it at least slowed him down. I thought about just ending the game by going for Apostolic Diplo victory, but Victoria didn't have any Hindu cities (and getting OB to spread it would be a bad idea considering Peter, Cyrus, and Willem all hated her and would give me a relations hit. And let me show you how close this was:



I'll try to explain what happened here. You see at the top of the screen the message where the war was ended by the AP. The arrow there isn't actually pointing at anything, but rather is pointing at what's NOT there- cultural defenses. The circle that has the grassland workshop is where Ragnar's stack was, and you see it now in the bottom right-hand corner. As you see, that stack contained 9 *highly* promoted Berserkers, 12 Horse Archers, 10 Catapults, a couple Chariots and a Spear. Nippur contained 6 or 7 defenders at the most, and only 2 of those were longbows if I'm remembering correctly. In short, Hammurabi was very screwed. This wouldn't have bothered me, except this city was touching my borders! If this city fell, that stack was coming at me next, and that stack would easily be enough to completely wipe me out. Thankfully this city never fell, but without the AP it was GOING to fall the next turn. One turn later and I think I would have lost this game honestly- relations with Ragnar were NOT good (I swear he made a demand every 10 turns which I always declined due to his religion).

From here I basically just teched along (I was leading in tech) peacefully and did all I could to boost relations with the Hindu bloc. Ragnar was shaping up to be my UN opponent which was perfect. Along the way I got lucky and popped a Great Engineer and saved him for the UN. I got tons of Great People (This game was definitely my most ever) and I lightbulbed quite a bit but I also settled a lot too for a while when lightbulbing wasn't helpful. I couldn't do much by the way of Golden Ages because I got almost all scientists for most of the game, but they were helpful to settle so it worked out fine. I beelined Biology and traded for everything else pretty much. Health was the MAJOR limiting factor for me- at one point I saw -14 food for health in one city (and this city was STILL growing!) but I did what I've never done in a game of Civ before and adopted Environmentalism, which turned out to be enormously helpful. Late game I was running the luxury slider to grow my cities even bigger to get more votes.

Anyways, I did get the UN in 1785AD, and rather than sandbagging it to get more votes I decided I would just end it if I could. I figured Ragnar would be my opponent (I wasn't paying very good attention, at this point I just wanted the game to end), and disaster strikes! Cyrus turns out to be my opponent, and the result:



Ugh... Willem not voting for me is VERY frustrating, as I'm at a +8 with Willem and Cyrus is at +7, so why did he not vote for me?? I don't understand the Diplo system sometimes, this kinda thing seems to happen to me a lot. Also Ragnar voting for Cyrus is a problem, as that put him over the top, but I started playing with favorite civics, and bribing people to revolt to different civics to try to set myself up better next time. Sure enough:



Now what I did NOT realize at the time was that I couldn't win the game without Cyrus' votes (no way I was getting Ragnar's or Vicky's votes). Now if you noticed Cyrus' votes were 158 and Ragnar's 155. Also, Peter still is voting for Cyrus. I bribed a civics change which made Peter like me better than Cyrus, hoping this would cause him to vote for me, so the next election came in:



At first I was frustrated that Peter abstained. I was literally doing all that was possible to boost relations. I couldn't adopt his favorite Civic because of a dumb civics resolution that Cyrus passed when he was Secretary-General, but I was doing everything else. Then it hit me that Ragnar and Cyrus had the same amount of votes (somehow Cyrus got chosen as the winner of th tie). Ragnar had more land and had gotten Biology more recently (so his cities had more growing to do than Cyrus), so I crossed my fingers and hoped he grew enough to get more votes. Also, at some point Victoria declared on me. I had to scramble my small military, but with far superior troops I could handle it very easily. Lost a few tile improvements but that was it.

1888AD was a very good year. First, Peter decides to dogpile on Victoria on his own (he was WHEOOH for awhile so I couldn't bribe him), giving me mutual struggle points. Second, Ragnar DOES overtake Cyrus in votes, becoming my opponent. So if I can just get Cyrus' vote I'll win, but getting Peter's as well gives me a more competitive score... So the result is in:





Got it! I'm sure many players will top 782 points (I could have done so by sandbagging this thing out a few dozen more turns), but I still am happy with that number. I managed to get my capital up to 38 pop with help from the National Park. My other cities I got quite big with Environmentalism/Luxury tax, though settling them later than I should as well as ending this earlier than I could have hurt me in that regard. I also did a really poor job of expanding early on (got no cities to the southwest), I didn't milk my score nearly as much as I could have, and I feel like I placed my cities poorly, so I don't expect my score to be competitive at all, but it was nice to pull off a win .

Play time was 12 hours, 12 minutes. Also, I have NEVER seen a food graph like this before:



You can probably tell where I got Biology if you look closely.

I checked and I got 22 Great People, 16 of which were scientists. I've never come close to that number before... The 2 units/city limit was never really a problem, because I was able to manage my borders to prevent wars and honestly I was usually 3-4 units below the limit all game (I just didn't have the production to waste shields on military). I built farms everywhere obviously, which I think is adequately proved by the very messed-up looking food graph .

All in all I had fun with the game, though managing workers as the game went on was pretty tedious. I think the map design was perfect, and thanks to Sullla for a fun game .

[T-hawk]

For this game I came into it figuring if I could pull off the Pyramids/Great Library combo, and manage diplomacy so that I avoided all wars, this game should be pretty easy to win. I would not be declaring war on anyone, and hopefully I would never be declared on.

Actually, war can be a powerful diplomatic tool. I jumped into dogpiles on both Victoria and Willem, who each got eliminated quickly, but earned me "mutual struggle" diplo merits with several civs together.

I didn't see any other way than just slow-building the thing.

Oracle to Metal Casting, whip forge, and 17 turns later rush the Pyramids by Great Engineer. Worked great for me.

I later realized aggressively whipping the settlers would've been smarter, but it was too late by then.

Yes. The Imperialistic trait means to whip settlers. They are more expensive if not whipped since food-to-settler conversion doesn't get the +50% bonus. (Curiously, the Imp trait does discount whip cost, but does not discount Uni Suffrage cash rush cost.)

Wow on Ragnar being that scary, and nicely played. In my game he was high on the power graph but not a runaway. As I understand it, sharing or not sharing a border only modifies the chances of an AI going to war, it never eliminates the chance completely.

I agree that the final scoring mostly reflected milking. I extended my game for just two extra UN resolution votes, then took the victory on the third opportunity. LiPing milked better than both of us. 1925 AD was far too late and allowed plenty of extra time for milking. A better score condition (but cumbersome to track and figure) might have been the population score in 1800 AD of each civ that later voted for you.

Ugh... Willem not voting for me is VERY frustrating, as I'm at a +8 with Willem and Cyrus is at +7, so why did he not vote for me?? I don't understand the Diplo system sometimes, this kinda thing seems to happen to me a lot.

More diplomatic modifiers exist than are shown in-game. Try this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=177450

Specifically, the value iBasePeaceWeight is 4 for Willem and 3 for Cyrus. If I'm reading that thread right, it gives them a permanent undisplayed +3 with each other. (calculated as 4 - abs(4 - 3)). By contrast, Peter is 1 and Victoria is 8, so they're permanently -3 with each other, so fought in almost every game. Hammurabi-Ragnar is even worse, at 8 and 0 for a permanent -4 with each other.

[scooter]

Actually, war can be a powerful diplomatic tool. I jumped into dogpiles on both Victoria and Willem, who each got eliminated quickly, but earned me "mutual struggle" diplo merits with several civs together.

Oh I agree, and it actually got Peter to vote for me at the end, but 1- I was fairly paranoid in this game, and 2- I was hoping to use religion instead- which worked out as most everyone was Hindu. I got all Hindus except Peter to Friendly, and he hit Friendly with the late war.

Oracle to Metal Casting, whip forge, and 17 turns later rush the Pyramids by Great Engineer. Worked great for me.

Funny, I knew there had to be another way, just couldn't think of it.

As I understand it, sharing or not sharing a border only modifies the chances of an AI going to war, it never eliminates the chance completely.

I should have made this more clear in my report, but my reasoning behind that part was also that Ragnar just could not reach me without that city. The mountains blocked him off from me, and he had Open Borders with no one, so the only possible way to reach me was while at war with Hammurabi, and I figured the odds of him double-declaring were pretty low.

I agree that the final scoring mostly reflected milking. I extended my game for just two extra UN resolution votes, then took the victory on the third opportunity. LiPing milked better than both of us. 1925 AD was far too late and allowed plenty of extra time for milking. A better score condition (but cumbersome to track and figure) might have been the population score in 1800 AD of each civ that later voted for you.

I do agree, though in my case it was also my fault for not claiming more land. I also realized later I should've gifted Biology to all my friends as soon as I could to get them to grow. I held onto that tech for probably 20-25 turns before realizing I should trade it away.

Thanks for the comments and tips and thanks for the link!

[T-hawk]

I should have made this more clear in my report, but my reasoning behind that part was also that Ragnar just could not reach me without that city. The mountains blocked him off from me, and he had Open Borders with no one, so the only possible way to reach me was while at war with Hammurabi, and I figured the odds of him double-declaring were pretty low.

The AI isn't smart enough to factor out mountains. A land border is a land border. See my report for Focal Point which saw several instances of AIs on adjoining mountain land borders fighting each other, despite no way to reach each other because of no open borders with a third party. That was in BTS 3.17 but I don't think that behavior changed any in 3.19. So Ragnar could have declared on you, but not reached you.

You are right that AIs will (just about?) never double-declare though. I can't recall ever seeing that except by Apostolic forcing.

[timmy827]

Nice job scooter, always great to see more people jumping into the RB series years after the game is released.