Epic One - Dwip's Report

[Dwip]

Wherein interesting mistakes are made, but fun is had by assorted players and small forest animals.

http://dwip.alsherok.net/civ4/epic11.htm

[Smegged]

Finally, I'm glad to see someone get a cultural victory! It was my first choice victory too but alas my game didn't go to plan...

It was also interesting seeing your relations to the two aggressive boneheads to the east. (You mean you had PEACE with the Mongols AND Aztecs!!)

[Kylearan]

Hi,

great game! I'm glad someone went for cultural victory - well done!

You did a good job of appeasing Genghis, but I agree that he should have declared on you, seeing how you squeezed him culturally...

Take that, Conan.

And thanks for that one...

-Kylearan

[Sullla]

Dwip, you do realize that you can draw on the world map, put dots and Xs or whatever, right? You can do more than just place signs.

Are the wonder movies really that much worse than Civ2? Seriously, in that game they just used mutimedia clips of the actual wonders, which I guess is OK, but it always seemed like something out of "Encarta encyclopedia" to me. To each his own, of course.

I think those first two city placements were quite strong and made good use of the terrain. Obviously I had a completely different dotmap from moving on the first turn, but I like the choices that you made. Strange that your Visigoth city popped up where it did; the barb cities in most games appeared to show up on the same tiles, and that wasn't one of them. Very bad luck for you that it was on a hill AND not on the coast!

Founding that Tours location was a nice move, being Creative and all. Founding that location and defending it with ONE warrior? Well, you got guts, my friend! If Judaism hadn't spread to Temujin almost immediately afterwards and improved relations, I'm sure he would have called your bluff. Allying with Monty and Temujin (via religion) against the rest of the world? That's just crazy enough to work!

Gandhi built the Pyramids in 200BC in my game, thus I had little chance to get it. Glad to see you were able to reap its benefits, however. But you don't switch to Representation until hundreds of years later?

You played up to 1000AD in one session? I am reminded again of how slowly I consider things when I'm not on a timer in MultiPlayer.

Those relations are pretty crazy that you posted. By allying with Monty and Temujin, you have gone over to the Dark Side of the Force... Even better, your dark allies roughed up the two peaceful AI civs, slowing their tech rate down drastically and allowing you to coast into the lead. This may have been a better gameplan than I thought!

"Oh yeah," I say. "Emancipation." Tad late on that. - Your mixture of brilliance and absent-mindedness has been highly amusing here.

Why didn't you dial research to 0 and culture to 100% once you got Mass Media? Or did you do that and I just missed it in the report? You also didn't get started on cathedrals until extremely late, which I'm going to guess was just another oversight, hehe.

You cultural domination at Tours was enormously fun to watch. Railroading Temujin's first ring tiles outside his capital! Then dominating it utterly later on. Great stuff to watch.

I agree with most of your closing observations, except for the "AI is too passive" one. Um, did you SEE what happened in most of these games? Washington doesn't have an aggressive AI personality, that's why he didn't declare. As for Temujin, you yourself were making a huge effort to keep him placated with religion and such. To me, that's just an indication that the system is working the way it's supposed to.

Congrats on the win and a very nice report.

[Bruindane]

Religion is not keystone of my games and am impressed by your diplomatic use thereoff. Tours is beautiful, even shocking-- great game, fun read.

[mjj55409]

Strange that your Visigoth city popped up where it did; the barb cities in most games appeared to show up on the same tiles, and that wasn't one of them. Very bad luck for you that it was on a hill AND not on the coast!

Interestingly, the barb city showed up in my game in precisely this spot. Fortunately with all the jungle it never grew past size 1, so it auto-razed when I captured it. I then founded Tours to the SE, which was eventually razed by the Greeks, but we needn't bring that part up

[Dwip]

Dwip, you do realize that you can draw on the world map, put dots and Xs or whatever, right? You can do more than just place signs.

I JUST learned about that last night, as it happens. Though if it refuses to save drawings like it does signs, that's still only a partial measure at best. Sure beats Paintshop Pro, though.

Are the wonder movies really that much worse than Civ2? Seriously, in that game they just used mutimedia clips of the actual wonders, which I guess is OK, but it always seemed like something out of "Encarta encyclopedia" to me. To each his own, of course.

Since you asked... What I love about the Civ 2 wonder movies, I think, is that they set each one to some really good music, which combined with the way the wonders were presented (showing the actual wonder, and not some crazy speed building animation) to be really inspiring to me. There might be some nostalgia talking there, too, because I've had the Oracle, Marco Polo, and Hoover Dam music stuck in my head for ten years, but really the Civ 2 movies made me feel like I was actually THERE, and not just watching an animation. And the space win movie from Civ 2 and its colony made me want to go play a game where I COULD colonize AC (this was before SMAC), whereas the space movie here makes me shrug.

Which is miles better than Civ 3's efforts in that regard, let me point out.

I think those first two city placements were quite strong and made good use of the terrain. Obviously I had a completely different dotmap from moving on the first turn, but I like the choices that you made. Strange that your Visigoth city popped up where it did; the barb cities in most games appeared to show up on the same tiles, and that wasn't one of them. Very bad luck for you that it was on a hill AND not on the coast!

It's massively fortunate that Visigoth got autorazed when I took it down, and I was able to found where I wanted to. It took a while for the resultant city to get good, but it was a pretty solid city when it got there.

Founding that Tours location was a nice move, being Creative and all. Founding that location and defending it with ONE warrior? Well, you got guts, my friend! If Judaism hadn't spread to Temujin almost immediately afterwards and improved relations, I'm sure he would have called your bluff. Allying with Monty and Temujin (via religion) against the rest of the world? That's just crazy enough to work!

If I hadn't felt the need to go after copper... The whole operation was me stretching really, really hard, and happened to work out primarily because of the religion thing, which can be disgustingly powerful if you can get it to your neighbors fast enough, and then keep dropping them missionaries every so often. Hence why I was only afraid of Monty and Khan for a very brief stretch during the first Aztec war, when I was frantically upgrading warriors and cranking axes (I think I cash rushed a couple with US, but can't remember).

Gandhi built the Pyramids in 200BC in my game, thus I had little chance to get it. Glad to see you were able to reap its benefits, however. But you don't switch to Representation until hundreds of years later?

You played up to 1000AD in one session? I am reminded again of how slowly I consider things when I'm not on a timer in MultiPlayer.

Once I get into the playing flow of things, especially in builder games, turns just sorta rush by. And I get a little absent minded. Hence the Representation thing, which I really beat myself up about, and swore I'd not forget any other civics changes...we saw how well THAT worked.

I tell ya, though, after pulling the Pyramids->Representation trick in a few games, I like it more and more each time I do it. It's just that good, even if just for the happiness boost.

Those relations are pretty crazy that you posted. By allying with Monty and Temujin, you have gone over to the Dark Side of the Force... Even better, your dark allies roughed up the two peaceful AI civs, slowing their tech rate down drastically and allowing you to coast into the lead. This may have been a better gameplan than I thought!

*mechanical breathing* "Napoleon...I am your father!"

"NOOOOOOO!"

I DID have everyone else's killer Washington, but I finally got ahead of him, and that was that.

"Oh yeah," I say. "Emancipation." Tad late on that. - Your mixture of brilliance and absent-mindedness has been highly amusing here.

Like I was saying... Flunkius needs to return, just to remind me about these things. I was telling myself, too, "Don't forget! Don't forget!" Yeah.

Why didn't you dial research to 0 and culture to 100% once you got Mass Media? Or did you do that and I just missed it in the report? You also didn't get started on cathedrals until extremely late, which I'm going to guess was just another oversight, hehe.

I pretty much did. As to cathedrals...yeah, I just didn't think about. Had I actually been persuing culture, as opposed to waffling around going "How AM I going to win, anyway?" this might've been different.

You cultural domination at Tours was enormously fun to watch. Railroading Temujin's first ring tiles outside his capital! Then dominating it utterly later on. Great stuff to watch.

Like I said, I have no idea why he didn't leap me for that. He had ample opportunity, wasn't far behind me, and just didn't.

Too, while I was kicking myself for it at the time, Tours sure did work out for me in the end, when I had resources that other people had to go through all sorts of contortions to get to. Funny how that works, sometimes.

I agree with most of your closing observations, except for the "AI is too passive" one. Um, did you SEE what happened in most of these games? Washington doesn't have an aggressive AI personality, that's why he didn't declare. As for Temujin, you yourself were making a huge effort to keep him placated with religion and such. To me, that's just an indication that the system is working the way it's supposed to.

Congrats on the win and a very nice report.

Thanks. And thanks for the comments. And as to AI passivity...I've noticed over several games, not just this one, that it takes an awful lot for me to annoy most AI civs to the point that they'll declare on me. I'm not sure what it is, exactly, because everyone else seemed to have a lot of wars, even without Monty. I declined a LOT of Washington's demands and such, as well as Khan's, plus Khan went Free Religion halfway through and was at -7 rep or something with me towards the end. So I'm puzzled. But not complaining.