Kuro's 52 Flavors of Civilization - A Game Report Thread

[Kuro]

With the release of Civ VI (But, sadly, my inability to have any money to buy it for any foreseeable future) and the fact that my current situation leaves me in a state where I can often play offline games but not online games, I have been playing quite a bit of the ol' favorite Civilization IV.

Starting with a game I had that had the theme of "forgotten leaders" and reading the old AI Survivor games Sullla reported on (and listening to the Troll Kon game again), it sparked on me to do a bit of a variat idea on it, specifically playing 1 game on each of the 52 leaders in Civ IV! Yeah, probably a bit old hat given Civ IV's age, but it is still a pretty monstrous 52 games, and I am not somebody who has worked to the bone and is able to beat Deity easily, I usually play on Monarch and Emperor!

That also got me thinking of the fact that, hey, people might appreciate hearing about it...although only after I'd finished two games. In the end, I decided to throw out those games, in part because they were played on slightly different settings than I will use. If you're wondering, the leaders for those games were Frederick and Hannibal. So I thought I would open this thread up for writing more detailed reports! I will probably not exactly be updating this every day, but I will try to not just let it die!

The Rules

1. Restricted Leaders is on and each leader gets 1 game, win or lose, barring exceptional circumstances like somehow starting on a 20 tile island with no nearby islands to expand to or something else crazy. You get one shot to be hot or not. Map rerolls are not permitted except in those kind of extreme scenarios. Enemy leaders may be picked or randomized and will usually be some mix of it based on thematics, such as putting Roman leaders in a game with Hannibal or having a "Conquest Leaders" theme.

Leaders will be played for the most part normally, but I may at times sneak in some "in-characterness": For example, I will more likely try to found a religion first as Isabella. Retiring early is not allowed: I must play until someone wins.

2. Maps with all-landmass, absurdity or otherwise far out there things like Oasis, Highlands, Fantasy Land and others are not permitted. Expect to see mostly maps such as Pangaea, Continents, Custom Continents, Tectonics, Hemispheres, Big & Small, Medium & Small, Archipelago Shaky Continents and such. Climate and such will usually be random, except in cases where it is leader appropriate. For example Saladin will get an Arid start, while Stalin would get a Cold start.

3. Choose Religions is on, along with No Vassal States and No Technology Brokering. No Tech Brokering has been chosen over flatout tech trade banning because it gets kind of boring to have no tech trading, not to mention it can force out a lot of strats like early religion when I am hoping to give them all somewhat unique games, and I find having some level of tech trading tends to help the AI. Choose Religions is because I enjoy the flavor of different religions being around and No Vassal States should be obvious. I will also be experimenting with Aggressive AI, due to what I find to be a low number of conquests/wars in the first two games, although I have yet to have the real aggromongers...

4. The difficulty will be Emperor, although the first two games were be played on Monarch: I felt like it did not punish me enough for mistakes and I want there to be challenge, so for the time being at least I am bumping up the difficulty to Emperor. This is also why I decided to throw out the previous games, as it felt unfair to give them both a lower difficulty. I'm not good enough to fight Immortal consistantly and it tends to constrain strats a bit too much anyway (like the aforementioned Isabella religiousness).

5. Leaders will be chosen either at random, alphabetically, because I feel like them/at whim or if this ends up being popular perhaps by vote.

6. Winning leaders will be listed according to how fast they won, although they will also have their Score and Normalized Score shown, along with how they won. Losing leaders will be listed according to how long they lasted and always below winning leaders. Victory type will also be listed.

Remaining Leaders By Civilization:

Bold denotes the leader is the active game. 

America: Abrahamn Lincoln (Philosophical/Charismatic), Franklin Roosevelt (Industrious/Organized), George Washington (Organized/Charismatic)
Arabia: Saladin (Spiritual/Protective)
Aztec: Montezuma (Aggressive/Spiritual)
Babylon: Hammurabi (Aggressive/Organized)
Byzantine: Justinian I (Spiritual/Imperialistic)
Carthage: Hannibal (Financial/Charismatic)
Celts: Boudica (Aggressive/Charismatic), Brennus (Spiritual/Charismatic)
China: Mao Zedong (Expansive/Protective), Qin Shi Huang (Industrious/Protective)
Dutch: Willem van Oranje (Financial/Creative)
Egypt: Hatshepsut (Spiritual/Creative), Ramesses II (Spiritual/Industrious)
England: Winston Churchill (Charismatic/Protective), Elizabeth (Financial/Philosophical), Victoria (Financial/Imperialistic)
Ethiopia: Zara Yaqob (Creative/Organized)
France: Charles De Gaulle (Industrious/Charismatic), Louis XIV (Creative/Industrious), Napoleon (Organized/Charismatic)
Germany: Otto von Bismarck (Expansive/Industrious), Frederick (Organized/Philosophical)
Greece: Pericles (Creative/Philosophical), Alexander the Great (Philosophical/Aggressive)
Holy Rome: Charlemagne (Protective/Imperialistic)
Inca: Huanya Capac (Financial/Industrious)
India: Asoka (Spiritual/Organized), Gandhi (Philosophical/Spiritual)
Japan: Tokugawa Ieyasu (Aggressive/Protective)
Khmer: Suravaryman II (Expansive/Creative)
Korea: Wang Kon (Financial/Protective)
Mali: Mansa Musa (Financial/Spiritual)
Maya: Pacal II (Expansive/Financial)
Mongolia: Genghis Khan (Aggressive/Imperialistic), Kublai Khan (Aggressive/Creative)
Native America: Sitting Bull (Philosophical/Protective)
Ottoman: Mehmed II (Expansive/Organized), Suleiman (Philosophical/Imperialistic)
Persia: Cyrus (Charismatic/Imperialistic), Darius I (Financial/Organized)
Portugal: Joao II (Expansive/Imperialistic)
Rome: Julius Caeser (Imperialistic/Organized), Augustus Caeser (Industrious/Imperialistic)
Russia: Catherine the Great (Creative/Imperialistic), Peter (Philosophical/Expansive), Stalin (Aggressive/Industrious)
Spain: Isabella (Spiritual/Expansive)
Sumeria: Gilgamesh (Creative/Protective)
Viking: Rangar (Aggressive/Financial)
Zulu: Shaka (Aggressive/Expansive)

Hall of Fame

The spoiler tag below is for the finished games as mentioned. Do not click if you do not wish to know the results of previous games.

None Completed!

The rest of this post will be for linkspace and so on. Game links will be in spoiler tags both due to clutter and to keep anyone from being spoiled if they do not wish to.

Pericles of Greece:

4000 BC

[Kuro]

I have used Random.org to pick the first leader to play, with them being numbered by alphabetical leader order, and have gotten Pericles of Greece.

I've always associated Greece as a sort of rival to Rome in Civ games and in Civ IV, I particularly tend to associate Pericles with Augustus Caeser, due to them both being famous leaders of their civilizations who were added in an expansion, are not as common/well known among Civilization games as Julius or Alexander and are a bit more forgettable in the framework of the game, and both being known for promoting/creating their respective forms of government. I have also decided to include Alexander himself despite being the other Greece civ, in part because Macedonia was one of the primary things that made Athenian Diplomacy fall. The other leaders will be random.



Leader: Pericles
Civilization: Greece

Map: Tectonics
Climate: Random - Temperate
Sea Level: Random - High
Landmass Type: Random
Aridity Level: Random
Difficulty: Emperor

Settings:
Aggressive AI
Choose Religion
No Technology Brokering
No Vassal States

Opponents - 6:
Augustus Caeser - Rome (Handpicked)
Alexander the Great - Greece (Handpicked)
4 Random

Leader and Civilization Thoughts:



One of the two leaders of the Greece Civilization, Pericles has the Creative and Philosophical traits. His Creative trait gives him +2 culture per turn and cheapter Libraries, Theaters and Colosseums: The last is somewhat noticable due to its synergy with the Greek civilization, one of the few leader/civ Restricted combos that cheapens a Civ's unique building. As is known, Creative is great for the early land grab and such, and it is actually my favorite trait in the game because it means avoiding Obelisks all together (I could probably manage that better!). Philosophical doubles the production rate of Great People (+100% Great People Points) and gives double speed Universities.

What this means is that Pericles has cheaper production on two of the prominent Research buildings in the game, solid traits both early and late and is one of the best civs for getting an early Great Scientist because he can get a cheap Library out fast and then get the points twice as fast. His traits fall off later because Great People cost so much it is hard to generate many and Creative's +2 culture is both small and there is little use for it anyway. Personally, I've always enjoyed playing Pericles as a solid combo of the Creative trait with a second tier econ trait and is overall solid if unspectacular.

As the Greek civilization, Pericles gets the rather useful Phalanx and Odeon, both of which I would say are above average but not superb. The Phalanx is quite good in the early game because it gets odds on everything with the right promotions and loses out on Chariot weakness, which also makes it good vs. the stacks of assorted goodies the AI likes to favor. It isn't a Praetorian, but it still can help crush the early game handily.

The Odeon is not quite as good, but I still feel it is solidly above average, as it provides +1 Happiness, +3 culture, +1 Happiness from Hit Singles and the ability to hire 2 Artists compared to a normal Colosseum. The extra happiness alone is fairly nice, but it also provides cheap culture for border wars and if one wants to win a Culture Victory it allows them to hire 2 Artists they normally wouldn't be able to...well, if they're not just in Caste System anyway. Pericles also gets them at half cost, giving him a rather cheap source of extra happiness (40 hammers!).

Greece starts with the underwhelming combination of Fishing and Hunting as starting technologies, not giving them either of the starting ground based food resources or Mining to go into a quick Bronze Working, although it can mean getting early fishing boats out and Scouts are not as bad when I keep goodie huts on. Still, it isn't any China or even the Ottomans.



Here is the starting position: I will likely found in place and then pop the hut, although I should probably scout for seafood first. Corn, Cows, Grassland, Three Hills and freshwater makes this look like a pretty sick capital. Will probably play a little tonight or tomorrow and write stuff up.

[Kuro]

Report 1 - 4000 BC - 2040 BC: The First Neighbor!

With me up unexpectedly late and with little to do, I decided to begin my Pericles game. First, I moved my Scout along the coastline to check for seafood, since I can get the hut with border pops anyway...



...And with none revealed, I settled in place.



As far as capitals go, Athens is pretty good. 3 Plains hills give it strong production power for at the least the early/mid game and with Wet Corn, Grassland Cows and 2 Lake tiles that can be Lighthoused it has solid food. All but one of the 4 Plains tiles in the city have access to fresh water for farms pre-irrigation and 2 Coast + 2 Lake + 6 Grassland tiles give it solid commerce potential. It doesn't specialize in any one area, but I find that frequently a plus for capitals.

I put some thought into how I want this to go and decided I would want an early Library into Great Scientist: This city has solid commerce potential, enough production to breeze through a Library and enough food to support the Scientists easily. Most likely will use it for an Academy, but who knows, bulbing could be useful. I also have no need of, say, a religion with Creative. With two food resources, solid forests and hills to mine, I decided my build path would be standard Double Worker start with a tenative tech path of Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Writing, possibly slipping in The Wheel and Pottery first. And with that, the game is afoot!



The village provides me with a map, which combined with my Scout shows an interesting potential city with Fish, Stone and the ability to share the Corn. Early Stone wonders?



First met civ: Tokugawa! He's a pretty good choice for early conquest with his loser AI and sea to my east, west and north...if I have the resources for it, anyway!

Turn 9: Islam is FIADL. Could be random, could be Saladin in the game, it does mean it wasn't Isabella or Justinian probably (AFAIK they have a high preference weighting towards Christianity).

T10: Agriculture finishes, begin on Animal Husbandry (11T).



Tokugawa is close. Like, dangerously close, you can fit both of our capital borders in one screenshot! And Tokugawa, as we all know, is one of those civs who is terribly hard to get along with, with the most "loser" AI in the game most likely. If we have some Bronze, mmmm, maybe we'll get some Phalanx use...

Oh, and on T15 my Worker finishes, instantly going to Farm the Corn. Animal Husbandry comes in on T21 and the Worker is right there to Pasture it, along with Mining in 8 turns. T23, our Scout "finishes" scouting and, uh, well...





It would appear our first game is going to be on an island! With our only neighbor being Tokugawa and him being so close,, this basically means an early conquest assuredly being in the cards. The island is big enough that I feel it is not a good idea to reroll, plus I don't wanna reroll my first posted game!, and...



See that little tile yield up there? Yeah, that implies land over there, so it is quite possible I will have decently solid settling possibilities on other islands, which would make this just fine. Play continues! Also note that with the ice flows under us, we are almost certainly at the bottom of the map.

Horses are discovered within range of the prospective Stone City and it is looking like a pretty amazing 2nd or 3rd city. Horses are also found 2T under the Rice to the left of Athens, making that a pretty solid city area to settle at some point.

T27, a random event destroys my Pasture. Well...dang. Thats not good. My second Worker finished on T25 at least, which makes it quicker to repair. 



Tokugawa beats me to two cities, with the okay city plant of Osaka, which I will enjoy ripping from him later!

After building the Corn Farm, a Plains Farm, Pastured Cows and two Plains Mines, my pair of Workers moves to the east to Farm the Rice and Pasture the Horses in preparation of the second city while I wait for Bronze Working to come in.



Bronze Working comes in on T45 and I instantly notice that this area right here is the only source of Bronze on the continent! Combined with the only two horse resources I can see being near my capital and controlling this means controlling the continent. Settler and Warrior instantly rerouted to settle here!

After that? I got forests, I got the whip, and I got a metalless (seemingly) neighbor when I have Phalanxes and a small island. Its time for an early rush! I SHALL RULE THE WORLD! WAHAHA-



Shit. (...And The Great Walls got taken, too! Thats pre-Stonehenge! Taoism was also founded in 2920 BC and Christianity in 2480 BC.)





It is only Turn 49 (Would make it 50, but...) and it would appear there's already a bit of a connundrum, as we are metalless without Iron Working (IF we have Iron!) and pretty much need to beat Tokugawa down to win I imagine. He also has cut us off from the lower half of this little island well. I see two potential options here:

- Finish The Wheel, hook up horses, instantly go full on ham on making Chariots and blitz the Copper city before it can build many/any Spear defenders. With the enemy deprived of metals and possibly horses, build up Phalanxes and just run Tokugawa over.

- Finish The Wheel and tech up to Iron Working and pray for iron. If Iron is found, proceed to blitz out Phalanxes for a pretty easy war with what I feel to be a production advantage and the advantage of having Phalanxes and horses.

The first feels risky, as just a few Spearmen will completely wreck it. If that attack loses, we probably pretty much lose the game right there. It gets us the city faster and pretty much puts Tokugawa in an impossible position, though.

The second option leaves us as the mercy of if we have Iron in our midsts, but if we do we gain a significant advantage and are much more hard pressed to just "lose" the game. It is however slower, I doubt Tokugawa will get Feudalism by then or anything but still, and we're screwed if we do not have Iron because he will definitely have enough Spear potential.

Interested in if anyone has any thoughts on it. I am currently inclined to head towards Iron Working! Might just be because I feel like usin' some Phalanxes, though. Seems like a tough position anyway. Its not a bad thing to start off on difficult ground, though!

[T-hawk]

52 games is an enormous amount of Civ. Counted up on my site and I've got... exactly 52 game reports posted as well... which was over a span of about eight years.

Chariots probably won't beat that city to a spearman; the AI knows how to whip if the city ever grows to size 2. Rushes are for multiplayer. You don't have to rush the AI, you can outproduce them in the long run by being smarter. I'm not even sure if phalanxes are the way to go compared to teching up to siege weapons. Remember Tokugawa is Protective and a phalanx won't have an advantage over his archers.

[Tacitus]

Since you have ivory, the safest option is probably to tech to construction and use a mix of war elephants and catapults. War elephants have no same era counter and are hard to stop, even if Tokugawa gets cats himself.

[Kuro]

52 games is an enormous amount of Civ. Counted up on my site and I've got... exactly 52 game reports posted as well... which was over a span of about eight years.

Chariots probably won't beat that city to a spearman; the AI knows how to whip if the city ever grows to size 2. Rushes are for multiplayer. You don't have to rush the AI, you can outproduce them in the long run by being smarter. I'm not even sure if phalanxes are the way to go compared to teching up to siege weapons. Remember Tokugawa is Protective and a phalanx won't have an advantage over his archers.

Yeah, who knows if I'll get it done, but it is pretty fun to at least try, and I imagine you have a lot more games of Civ if you count non-reported ones or the like. You're right on the face I can outsmart the AI, I tend to be a bit rush happy, probably because I tend to go for rushes against close opponents on Monarch. I'm also a bit sloppy (These have been my first full Civ games in about a year, to give an idea) and don't always properly think things through...which, hey, reports are helpful for that!

Since you have ivory, the safest option is probably to tech to construction and use a mix of war elephants and catapults. War elephants have no same era counter and are hard to stop, even if Tokugawa gets cats himself.

You make a good point, I tend to forget about Elephants a lot because Ivory is a bit rare (And I tend to war more around Axes, Knights and Curassiers). My land isn't bad so this is probably a better strat. In that case...time for some dotmapping!



Current plan for City 1, which will be founded swiftly, is here. Have to make sure that I can get the Ivory, affords good cultural pressure and border sealing vs. Toku and will be a solid production city with time/the cows. I could put the city 1N of the Ivory to snag the fish, but that makes my great City 2 spot only have food it must share with others and the city spot is very poor with City 2 and, say, the new Tokugawa city founded there. It would also probably make City 1 the spot of aggression for Toku if he attacks early, which is good because it is on a hill.



City 2 seems like the power city, with Fish, sharable Corn and overall solid food, solid production and sea + flood plains and the like. I could put it one down and to the right if the Stone had any food, but sincei t doesn't a city to the north being crammed in for the Stone would invariably be quite crappy. I might actually found this one third, because...



City 3 has two improved tiles, Rice and Horse, and so would be able to be bootstrapped out very quickly and be an instant contributor. I will probably found it second just because of the added speed, since City 2 is not under pressure to be settled. City 3 is solid but unspectacular.



Finally, Filler City is pretty filler: It has no food resources and so would be slow growing, but farm the Plains and add a Moai here and it gets solid 2/1/1 tiles everywhere and some cottages for a fairly valauble city. It is not high priority, but fits pretty much perfectly in a dotmap too, so why not settle it at some point? Stone also helps Moai get out faster.



And here is a Dotmap Overview shot.

Current tech path is The Wheel (I could use resource hookups!) -> Pottery -> Writing, however, I am also considering The Wheel -> Sailing -> Masonry. The logic behind this is that I could probably get The Great Lighthouse out at my capital, which would be great when it looks like so many of the cities will be coastal, but this delays Pottery and Writing by quite a lot and I worry that it is far too slow. Capital has 6 Forests to chop, plus solid hill production. I could go The Wheel -> Pottery -> Sailing -> Masonry, but will that be too slow to get The Great Lighthouse? Am I overestimating how fast it'll go on Emperor? Could just be worth YOLOing anyway. If I get a Great Merchant from that, I could also use it to scout Toku's land and fund deficiet research for a long time. The Great Lighthouse is in general pretty strong. And only The Great Wall is taken so far. Hmm.

[Brian Shanahan]

City 1 is useless, better to plant on the plains hill tile the game is giving the blue circle to. With your creative you'll get the elephants in five turns.

You can always go back to city 1 as a fishing village when you've lighthouses and trade routes, but it'll be a drag on your economy for a long time to come if you settle it. And planting on the blue circle tile also allows you to shift your filler city 1East to make it a useful city to plant.

[Tacitus]

Brian is right, City 1 is probably not worth founding. Even with creative I doubt you could get the cows from toku. Unfortunately, I don't think that founding on the plains hill will actually get you the ivory in 5 turns. SE-SE is third ring borders I think. I would found on the plains tile 1E of the horses. It gets the ivory and horses first ring, and the fish in five turns. Since it will probably take you at least that long to build the workboat, that delay doesn't matter much. That opens up a city on the grass tile 1W of the stone (farm the flood plains for food), and a late filler city that can share the rice on the plains tile SW of the bare desert.

[Kuro]

The Plains Hill indeed does not get the Ivory until 3rd ring, which is pretty risky for letting Toku get it, and with the plan being Elephants + Catapults it seems unwise to put it in 3rs ring.

I guess I can get two filler cities in by founding 1W of the Stone and 1 SW of the bare desert, but won't both be weaker? It also seems like a lot of reliance on swapping the Rice resource.

One issue with founding on the plains 1E of the Horse is that it invalidates City 2 as an option, due to minimum city distance. What about 2E on the Grassland Forest instead? Gets the resources save Horse in the same time and allows City 2 to exist still.

[Brian Shanahan]

Tacitus is right about the borders. His plant is the best. And in that case I'd actually raze Toku's copper city, 1NE by the cows is much better.