Epic 20 - Timmy's meta-stagnation

[timmy827]

Yeah, I'm not done yet so this is a placeholder ATM. It's a 3.17 shadow anyways. I'll keep it as authentic possible by not reading the other reports until I'm done playing.

EDIT: Ok, game complete, 1895AD space win. Brief version was a lot of abuse. I felt kind of bad about it but wasn't sure if I could win from such a difficult setup. First abuse was tech trading of course, besides Theology I hit paydirt by being the first civ to horseback riding; after self-researching most of the skipped worker techs used those two to get almost everything in the classical era. Second abuse was elephants+cats, fought a long war against Monty reducing him to two cities. Cathy came after me too but fortunately not until I was ready, she was up CS, Engineering, and Feudalism during our war but more phants and cats saw me thought. Vassalized her for tech leaving her with the island city west of Moscow. During these wars I spent about 900 years self-researching civil service; I was glum about missing the first Stagnation game so I was happy to partially recreate the scenario in this game Somehow managed to get to Liberalism first and used the techs on those paths for another big trade/broker round to catch me up to the early Renaissance as my economy slowly took off. At the end of a golden age in the 1600's I noticed Hannibal was plotting against me; abused Nationhood rifles + upgrading siege to Cannon to take all of his mainland cities (this last abuse wasn't so bad, I was way bigger so this allowed me to win a war quickly instead of winning a war I shouldn't have). Chief prize was his capital which was an excellent Ironworks site far better than anything I had. Founded Sushi and cruised to space well ahead of Darius and Justinian. Full report will be up soon hopefully.

EDIT (again): After reading through the other submissions, it's clear I was on the way-lucky side as far as AI behavior. As noted above Cathy didn't declare until I had taken what I wanted from Monty. In the beginning Monty declared on Darius despite same religion, giving me the time to get HBR + Construction. While Cathy was building up I was nervous b/c Hanni was also getting ready, but he declared on Jusitinian though more sheer dumb luck - Hanni had captured a barb city giving him close border tensions and fought a war with an empire separated from his core by Darius. He also bought in Monty so I didn't have to worry about Monty backstabbing me as I fought Cathy.

[timmy827]

Pregame Thoughts: Cool. I wasn't one of those who requested it, but I'm pretty happy to see this scenario. Not only was it a good member from the "classic" (ie before I started playing CIV) round of games but of course the not-4000BC setup makes it very unique.

Ouchie on the rules though, definitely cranked up a bit from the original...fewer cities, higher difficulty level (although with BTS, it's probably hardly a difference), and no economic help on the traits!. The diplo situation looks to be problematic as well. Hopefully I'll be able to pull this off, but I'm not expecting a Tsushima equivalent for a good long while! I do see one big advantage compared to the original version - Theology is a pretty expensive tech for this time period, so I may be able to do some slick wheeling and dealing, almost like a free Philo bulb-and-whore. Depends on who has Alphabet.

Finally, nice touch with the mountain wall as a metaphor for pre-Meiji isolationism. I know having us on our own island would probably cause too many problems so that' probably the best historical simulation. Now, if Sullla is really the master history student/CIV sponsor, an American galley will wander by our coastline in the first few turns....I wind up somewhat disappointed.

Alright, first turn...well at least no one has enough on their hands. No one has alphabet either. There's classic silly builds going on. Kyoto, as our only size 5 city, obviously starts a worker immediately. You can't see it in the opening screenshot as it is blocked by the ivory icon, but Osaka (SW city) is at size 4 and can be reconfiged to grow in a turn. The catch is that it will be both unhappy and unhealthy, but it's still probably best. As you'll see below that turned out to be no problem at all...
Satsuma (NE) is the Christain holy city so it obviously needs no monument, Kagoshima also has the religion so its borders will pop in due time. Kago and Tokyo are set to Granaries. I initially put Satsuma on a granary as well, then realize that I probably don't want it growing past size 3. Besides that FP, it has no 2 food tiles; I'm not a fan of working plains farms so I will leave it at 3, eventually working farmed flood + 2 gold mines. This also means I'm starting a Settler as soon as it grows! It would be amazing to get the SE river site with spices and dyes, it will be useless until Calendar and soso afterwards but I think I'm gonna need those resources. However, getting there before anyone else may be a pipe dream. Tokyo has its clams improved plus corn, FP, oasis, so it will grow fast even before any worker attention (and will switch to a worker once it gets to size 5)

The good news is that the economy isn't totally stagnant. After deleting warriors and no-experience archers, I get rid of unit costs while keeping 12 archers, enough for the moment hopefully. This allows 10 sci/turn sustainably, plus we have 100 gold to burn through.

For techs - we have (besides Theo, Archery, and their prereqs) nothing besides the starting techs. We lack Ag, AH, Mining, BW. I see from a Winery that Cathy has Monarchy already, that would be a very desirable tech to pick up early in trade. If Cathy gets Alpha we can trade for it immediately (she will trade techs despite being Annoyed, and I've noticed that for some reason the AI is always willing to trade Monarchy, even at monopoly.) Her favorite civic is HR which hopefully will eventually pull us back to Cautious.

Other inital things...I open borders with Cathy, Hannibal, Ramsesses as noone dislikes them. Send an archer into both Cathy's and Hanni's lands.

Research: Getting trade routes up is going to be big (none of our cities are connected at all!) I'm tempted to ditch Ag for Sailing, but decide not to as roads will still be needed for all but one city and we have a while to wait on the workers. May decide to go for AH before Ag despite missing the discount, I think the pigs at the capital have to be the first priority as nothing else will help get workers out quicker, cows at Osaka will be huge too. Other big priorities would be cottages on FP, camping ivories, and roading for trade network which we already have the techs for. The beginning is going to be kind of tedious; the first AI showing up with Alpha will be a huge boon as we can probably trade them Poly or Mono for our missing 1st and 2nd tier techs. Hate to blow WFYABTA on early techs, but it will probably be good for one or two of them. OTOH, as previously noted we have a while to wait for significant worker power and our economy, while bad, isn't totally incapable of researching some of those on its own.


So I begin, and on the 2nd turn a worker starts at Osaka. Due to a bug I'm getting 3 more food applied to the worker; the food needed to feed the unhappy citizen is not counted and neither is the unhealth when computing how much surplus is added to the worker build (although it still applies to the food bar; you can have a city starving and putting food into a worker at the same time!)


In 215BC I gain visibility into Cathy's research and find that she is going after Construction, not good...Also not good is that she has settlers wandering around the gaps in my cities. However, Hannibal acquires alphabet this turn and is willing to deal!

Plain - Sailing for Mono then Alpha for Theo? Or see if Math can be thrown in? If not math, may be worth picking up BW...if I had mining.

At this point some RL things force me to put this aside, and by the time I come back I have patched to keep up with succession games I'm in. Doesn't fix the worker bug, maybe I should've submitted a formal bug report...

OK, pick up Sailing for Mono that turn. Next turn Tokyo gets to 5 and is also able to start a worker while benefitting from that bug. Next turn Hanny apparently trades Alpha for Monarchy to Catherine. I am her Worst Enemy so I cannot get anything from her.

Do this once I get Mining:

Copper is revealed 2N of capital.

80BC - Very happy to meet this Justinian despite his rep as a religious zealot (although since Theocracy is his favorite, that more than cancelled out the religion thing and we stayed cordial the whole game). Why?

I can then sell Alpha to Ramses for IW (he wasn't willing to trade me Math, must have a high threshold as Darius was the only one not having it.) With the patch it was easy to tell Ramses was Monty's worst enemy, but I got no penalty for that...the true workings are still a mystery to me.
Have now gotten everything available (except Ag, and Monarchy) with only giving Theo to Hannibal.

Um, so much for that:

Well, this puts her at Cautious. With her that's no guarantee of peace, but it's something. However we are gonna get more close borders trouble soon:

Wasn't expecting to get that site, but thought Hanni would.
Soon Monty comes by with a demand:

I comply since he borders me and Ramses doesn't. This may have been a mistake, forgot there is no positive with Monty, only a negative avoided, and no 10-turn treaty either.

On the not-getting-kicked-around front:
First workers out of capital and Osaka pastured the nearby animals first. Then roaded both cities to their rivers for trade connections, but took a while to get roads to the eastern cities. I'm researching HBR. With five cities and no economic traits, clearly warring my way out is the path. At 85 AD 4 other civs have Construction but only Cathy is willing to trade and I have nothing to give her. Come on...Next turn all but Darius have but 4 are still unwilling to trade! Geez (this is another weird issue, AI's have higher monopoly settings for Construction. Noted this in Adv. 30 and it also came up in LK146). Monty also has enough on his hands...revolt to Slavery just in case.

Back to getting kicked around...Justinian demands Theology. I'm not afraid of him since he must be far away, but if I refuse I'd probably move to Annoyed and be unable to trade techs anyways. Monty demands Alpha and I agree for peace. I'm tired of being the punching bag! I made a lopsided trade to Darius: Theo+Math for Monarchy. I need him to get math so he gets Construction so I can trade someone for it.

Another lopsided deal:

Next turn Islam is founded in Persia! Darius had been lagging behind in tech, weird for a Fin/Org powerhouse, I guess that's why. Later I found out that something was funny about the religion techs and I think he was actually first to Philosophy.


Lots going on in the picture. Best news is that Monty has declared on Darius. Bad is that Cathy is going for Feudalism, I was debating warring against her. But killing Monty will be good as he is always gonna hate me, while with adopting HR Cathy will be on reasonable terms. Almost done with HBR and it's gonna be a monopoly! I'll have to research Constr a bit on my own to get it from Cathy but then I'll be ready to amass a force. Now that basic tile improvements are in place, I have 4 cities I can whip out of plus a ton of forests to chop. Abusing this and elephants is a bit stale but I honestly don't see any other good options here.

I get succesful trade for const as predicted and am able to broker it nicely.

I am able to trade HBR for 2/5 done Currency also, then sell it off to other civs for some gold. At 550AD I'm not quite ready to attack Monty yet but Darius asks for help, since I'd be going in a couple turns later anyways I agree. Here's the situation:

[timmy827]

Now the problem is that Hannibal has had enough on his hands for a while and I thought I had to be the target. I don't intend to build courthouses too soon but I'm burning through my cash pile, ideally Hannibal will ask for tribute which will give me time and I want to minimize the gold I have to give up for peace. Or I could give him CoL which would suit me fine.

More trading:



War went smoothly in terms of kills/losses, though I was saddened to see Darius drop out soon after I declared. Of course, I have big problems since I have no map of Aztec territory and have to gamble on going north after capturing that first city. I find a city founded right on top of iron, with deer as the only other food source and lots of tundra. Not a great location but I keep it as Catherine will surely grab it if I wait for a settler. I have no iron and it's nice to have it immediately connected. A few turns later as I press on I notice that Catherine also has enough on her hands...I take some time to think, this is a major crossroad. Hannibal is still plotting also, although I have had a scout in his territory for a while and have not seen any scary attack stacks forming.

Decide to keep pressing Monty and hope that the incoming attacks against me are weak and/or I have enough time to build additional defenses. Reach Teotihuacan in 775AD:

From all the Aztec culture still in the area I correctly guess that the capital is closeby to the NE. Very nice how that mountain range lets me not worry about counterattack from the south.

Monty was keeping a lot of units in Calixtahuaca, the other iron border city near me, but never did much with them, which made capturing the eastern cities very quick.

The city whose culture you can see in the picture was razed a few turns later (horrible place, all tundra and water.) All these acquisitions of course brought me close to economic stagnation again.

in 950AD I catch a huge break as Hanni DOW's Justinian and apparently bribed in Monty as well.

I was convinced he was planning to come after me as there is a big Persian empire between them, apparently I overlooked a barb city Hanni captured on the Byz border. Cathy has culture bombed a junk city which is now taking one of Satsuma's golds. This cannot be tolerated and now that I can be confident that I won't be fighting on two fronts I can do something about it. I attack Monty again first though, would like to get one more city and if I wait he'll likely vassal to Hanni as soon as one of them gets Feudalism.

Monty doesn't move his pile of units outside the one city I want but I take it easily with the loss of 2 cats. His remaining 2 cities are a ways away and would be crushed by Persian and Carthaginian culture so I sign peace and Monty does become Hanni's vassal.

I continue the brokerage train:

I turn it to Darius for Compass. That isn't immediately useful at all but hey, need to provide my virtual people with signs of progress as I've been researching Civil Service for about 450 years now and am nowhere close to finishing!


My other cities focus on Cats as I'm gonna need a lot of collateral to get through Cathy's pikes and longbows (and walls/castles, argh!). This next war is gonna be ugly...

Cathy kicks it off in 1030AD, just a few turns before I would have. The opening is a bit hectic as I lose a couple of workers and have to whip/upgrade at an ex-Aztec city but I soon set things right:




This is probably one of the weirdest AI moves I've seen:


Yaro is captured that turn. I still cannot believe the power of cats, even at this tech disadvatage I only need to sacrifice 2 of them to kill 4 longbows, one elephant, and 2 trebs. The city has the Great Library (books fresh off the presses!) and Parthenon. Cathy is already willing to capitulate, but I want it all now, especially Moscow which has the Colossus, ToA, and MoM. The only problem I have is that someone is giving Cathy ivory, I really have nothing to fight elephants except my own. Ramssess declared on me too but since he's overseas I didn't sweat it.

After this point, taking remaining cities is a slow process due to castles. When I capture Rostov, I am kind of embarrassed to realize that a nondescript, just taken fishing village has more infrastructure than any of my cities:

Rest of the war is pretty dull. In other news, without any action on either side I get Ramssess to pay me some gold for peace, then broker Compass to him for Aesthetics. Monty breaks free from Hannibal after the war against Justinian ends. The only thing that worries me is Hanni declaring on me (I'm now his worst enemy from close borders at the russian city and refused requests during the war), as long as I have enough turns to finish Russia I'll be fine though.

While it may be easiest to keep using this stack of doom against the rest of the world I plan to play nice from here and go to the stars. Only seems fitting for a stagnation scenario (I did a pretty good job of creating a 2nd one myself!) There won't be too much suspense, I have enough decent land to be assured of making it although I will continue to be behind for quite a while.

Um, about that comment on the rest of the war being dull...as I'm a few turns from taking Novgorod, leaving Cathy with an island city to the west and an iceball founded on the northern marble, she vassals to Hannibal. I thought this @^@#* was fixed at some previous point (ie you become at peace with both civs when this happens. It seems like you should at least have that option). I have almost nothing on that border, thankfully the first turn attack is just one knight-phant pair pillaging. However, he soon puts together enough to take Vladivostok from me, then starts building an army there. His buildup is slow enough that I'm confident I will be able to resist losing any more cities. I have cultural control over a dye still and probably will for a while, so I was willing to let him keep it. However, I needed Cathy to de-vassalize so I could capitulate her or wipe her out totally, otherwise her western island would choke Moscow and Novgorod for a long time. I expected her to ditch the vassalship after taking the iceball as it's supposed to happen when the vassal gets below 50% of their original land, and her last city only controlled it's own 2-tile island, but that didn't happen. Frustrated, I whip out galleys in ex-Russia for an invasion. During this time, Hannibal launches an attack that I smash easily and I am able to retake Vladivostok. In 1375 Cathy was just about to be wiped out, but she breaks free from Hanni finally and I capitulate her. Peace with Hanni for 300+ gold.

During this long war I was falling just a bit behind, here's a screen from 1300:

The turnaround comes way faster than I hoped:
In 1315 Moscow and Novgorod (latter containing a 28/turn Jewish shrine!) come out of resistance and my balance jumps by 50 or so. I can turn research to 30% breakeven, bringing me to 100 SSPT at last. I detour to Literature first and finally finish Civil Service in 1335.
When I vassal Catherine I pick up Guilds and Philo (that's why I didn't just kill her off). Justy doesn't have guilds so I can get 130 G + optics for it. I burn through plunder gold to get Paper, then use a stored GS (from the Great Library) to bulb Education, and all of a sudden at 1400AD I have a monopoly on it and running for Liberalism! Hmm, playing from an intentionally sabotaged start, warring continuously for 800 years, taking about that long to self-research CS, and I'm going to land Liberalism? Blake, where are you?

Hmm, lost a bit of log here to a crash. In 1400 I start a golden age (thanks for the Maus, Cathy!) with a single artist. Tenochtitlan generates a 100% prophet for the Christain shrine. I take Econ with Lib in 1435 and gift it to Hannibal immediately for civic bonus. Revolt to FS+FM. Research RP for my windmill hordes (had never used these much before but were quite useful for this mapscript, lots of many hills/low food cities) while I wait for Cathy to crawl to Nationalism. I traded and brokered Education for gunpowder, banking, engineering, and PP. Here's an overview of my lands at the end of the golden age:


By 1550 I've finished Constitution, kicked off another GA (unfortunately, Justy built the Taj). This is roughly where I was on Closing Day...Oops. The civics have pulled Hanni out of annoyed and I can open borders again giving trade income a boost. Hanni is gifting monopoly techs to his vassal Monty, which makes him willing to trade with me and I pick up Chem for Constitution.

As if the crashes weren't enough, here's a nice reminder to get a new video card, or something...

Later on I am treated to the haunting sight of Darius's disembodied beard talking to me also, unfortunately the whole system crashed before I saved that screenshot.

1620 is the last turn of my 2-GP golden age. Have gotten Democracy, Corp, and cusp of Rifling. I discover Hanni has enough on his hands and this time there's no doubt he's coming after me. After concluding that Carthage would be a far better IW city than anything I currently have (I have almost no cities on rivers!), I decide to break my earlier peaceful pledge and absorb Carthage. Pull a last-turn revolt to Nationhood, Merc, and Slavery (the last mostly for ex-carthage cities). Here's the predictable result right after I finish Steel, with Hanni's main force in place too.


War is a breeze, I do lose some Samurai to Grens (not sure what's going on there, the modified Rifle strengh should be 9 2/3 against Grens). Carthage itself taken in 1700, here's a shot:

Note that the war is over even before any cities come out of resistance. I now control all of the early stone wonders, HG is quite nice as there tend to be considerable health problems with the changes to factories in BTS. Picked up SciMeth and Astro in trades (ouch! went from +30 and almost 900 turn to even and 750/turn, that Colossus was doing a lot of good) and got Music in the peace deal. No capitulation because Justinian hates Hanni and I don't need more diplo penalty.

Around this time it becomes clear Darius is going cultural but has a looong way to go. He actually gives up on it for a while later, then as I get close to launch goes back to it again, weird.

Not much left to report on because
1) I'm behind the schedule,
2) With such a strong position, no doubt about winning. Darius, Justinian, and Ramses are all pleased, (the latter despite the fact I've spelled his name 5 different ways in this writeup) so no threat of war.
3) Now that I'm pulling ahead in tech, the uniqueness of the scenario is basically gone, rest of the game is conventional.

I will note that the Slavery revolt was a mistake, all Carthaginian cities could expand borders by building Culture and only starved once. I also stayed in Merc far too long, I tried switching out once I build the CR and embarrasingly found my gold and science shoot up by a combined 200 or so. Founded Sushi and was quite helpful, eventually got to +8 food with some resource trades. No more tech trades, Darius and Justinian were the only possible sources and monopoly status kept them from sending me any. Couldn't get either to Friendly.

Anyways, I finish the ship (without the optional engine) in 1877 and win in 1895:


For fun, here's the GNP graph:


Yes, that's me holding at 0 for a millenium! At least I had Monty to keep me company down there. I wish you could zoom in on turns in the past to get a better look at that period, it all gets squished by the rise at the end of the graph.

[timmy827]

Summary:
Like I mentioned in my paragraphs before the main report, I felt a little bad about abusing things like tech trading, chop/whip army spam, general inability of AI to deal with elephants and mass siege, but I thought during the game (and the other reports seemed to confirm) that it would have been very difficult otherwise. I still had quite a good time with the game although the space win endgame was somewhat tedious. I feel pretty lucky that my experience was kept lively with hostile neighbors but not totally ruined by a dogpile (all that caving in the early years appears to have paid off!), and as I noted I got a basically ideal scenario with AI DOWs. It's too bad that many other players were dealt much rougher and sometimes unplayable hands. I sort of agree with T-Hawk that combining the diplo problems of locked religion and untrustworthy neighbors with the basic premise was too much. I sympathize with Sulla's desire to add something so it wasn't just a rehash of the original but I think that easing the diplo situation (while maintaining some restrictions on that front) along with a bump in difficulty to Emperor might have made for a better scenario. Would have still been challenging but with less chance of a dogpile ruining things for the player. T-hawks suggestion of more peaceful neighbors would be one thing. Leaving the free missionary to the player's use would be another (or allowing OrgReligion temporarily), giving a chance to convert a neighbor to the faith. In my game Monty converted to Hindu on the 2nd turn, and I decide the time to research Meditation, build Monastery, build missionary could not be justified as it was too likely for Hannibal to get a random spread before then. However, setting up a scenario like that would be very difficult.

[sooooo]

Nice, thanks for a very detailed report. I thought it was amusing that you attacked the AIs in order of increasing land-quality. But that turned out to also be the order of increasing trustworthyness.

I don't think you should be embarrassed about the abusing things. It's just part of the game. Elephants are good. Tech trading is the only way out of economic holes. Nothing else you can do. Of course, this is coming from a player who had just drafted most of his population into the way of the samurai, so take that as you will .

[timmy827]

Nice, thanks for a very detailed report. I thought it was amusing that you attacked the AIs in order of increasing land-quality. But that turned out to also be the order of increasing trustworthyness.

Yeah, that thought occured to me, although Monty converted to Hindu and became Annoyed so I could never find out that his lands past the first couple cities were sort of marginal until I captured them. Since Cathy was going to get Feudalism before I was ready for war, it seemed like Monty would be the easier target as well.

I don't think you should be embarrassed about the abusing things. It's just part of the game. Elephants are good. Tech trading is the only way out of economic holes. Nothing else you can do. Of course, this is coming from a player who had just drafted most of his population into the way of the samurai, so take that as you will .

I thought at some point I read a comment from you along the lines of "winning almost any game of Civ4 is trivial if the player is willing to abuse the absurdly overpowered Nationhood" Of course, in this game if I was anywhere close to Nationalism before finishing Monty or Cathy I would have jumped at the chance to use it too.