Sullla Wrote:Please don't use CheatMode to figure out the location of the starting tile. That's a no-no for these games. OK? (Why you would be using anything called "CheatMode" is very surprising! Isn't the name a giveaway not to do that? 
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Oh, the same reason that somebody released a product that needed to enable cheatmode to function properly, eh? Plus the fact that there's no label on the data saying "this information brought to you courtesy of cheat mode". So it wasn't until Sirian helped me track down the source of the information that I figured out what was doing; and the workaround isn't necessary post 1.52.
Quote:Umm - why did you build the Parthenon in this game?
1) I know I'm going to be feeding fish to a lot of specialists (might not be a good idea, but that's definitely in the game plan after posting Texcoco in the middle of the sea during Frozen Jungle)
2) I want a Great Profit! for the Shrine
3) And it wasn't until much much later that I realized that running priests would get me the GP. I've learned a little bit about Caste System, but I still haven't learned about specialists...
Quote:Am I the only one who built lots of War Chariots in this game? (9 axes vs. 1 War Chariot? I don't get it!) Why was everyone in love with axes? War Chariots are the same strength, faster, and cheaper! 
Nolo contendere.
Quote:If anything, I think we should have the screws on tech trading even tighter from reading your game.
Given the research strategy of the AI, I can see that. Alternatively, perhaps the AI should be more aware of the other researchers out there. On the other hand, if the research AIs start swapping among themselves, the player is going to get shut out completely - which isn't likely to be much fun.
With the game as it is today, I'd suggest investigating some negative drag in Adventure/Epic scoring to discourage tech trading, without disabling it completely - leave players an escape hatch so that they can restore the game to a fun state if they fall too far behind.
Quote:I don't know how Kublai Khan got two cities on the landbridge between you and Qin.
As far as I can tell, he opened borders with Qin (they shared a religion remember), waltzed through with some military and captured Bantu. I wasn't interested in waging a culture war against another Creative civ that had more military than I, so I got Rock Harbor settled and left that area alone. Tiflis was settled in 1240 completely without fanfare.
I didn't explore more then the initial horse shoe on my own (boy, I bet some units with two movement points would have helped there) - it wasn't until map trading kicked in that I discovered the position was weird.
Quote:The Spanish landings... yikes! 
I guess you have to watch the borders more closely when at war.
The military advisor would have saved me, had it been sufficiently prominent in my awareness. Though if anyone has the ear of the implementation team there, it would be nice to be able to toggle barbs on and off as well.
Quote:You over-estimated just what's possible to do in terms of early space launch. A pre-1800 launch would require someone to get the Apollo Program by around 1770, at the very latest. The tech costs were increased after the release of Civ4 in the patches too high to make that possible, at least not very often on Monarch. After all, the last couple techs cost over 10,000 beakers on Monarch, which you just can't do all that fast! This isn't Civ3; you can't rely on tech-whoring to get you entire branches of the tree in one fell swoop. I appreciate the optimism, but I don't think it would have been possible to score a 1750 launch on this map. 
Probably not - I still get tripped up by the changing time scales. If you were willing to trade off certainty of victory for an earlier victory, I think you could have shaved some real time off of your launch, though - more than just tree chopping and workshops. What happens if you
(1) Start the war earlier
(2) War against Khan
(3) Gift the cities to Qin.
He's the one with Financial, after all, and can get more commerce out of those tiles than you can. (If you wanted to be careful, plunder all the production, and pave it over with cottages before handing it over).
Give him a boost to the top of the tree, if necessary, and run the bottom of the tree yourself; run the research in parallel, rather than in series. Having given Qin a quarter of a continent, you probably don't need to maintain as much military, so the production firehose can be channelled to research as well, or wealth if that's easier to leverage. Ignore the wonders, except Space Elvaders, to distract Qin's production.
The cost of research is discounted by the number of civs who know it, right? So maybe you bring everybody into the (top row) of the space age - and keep them all up to date while maintaining a leading monopoly at the bottom?
Of course, it might be the AI that scores the pre 1750 launch.
This is just off the top of my head - there have got to be some HoF discussions on gaming the launch date. And you have to decide if this sort of thing is fun - it's an amusing mental exercise, for me anyway.
But good grief, if this map isn't made for an early space launch - what's missing? Besides a clear indication of where the equator lies (another subtlety of the game that I completely missed - Heliopolis was my production city, so I just bit the 'vator without thinking twice. Better to be lucky than good) and aluminum.
