NCG 4- The Triumph of the Mind
Welcome to the NCG, a public game played out for all to see at the noble level. this particular thread will be in a format similar to the Lonely Hearts Club. For those not in the know, I will provide a game and a starting screenshot, along with the save, and people are welcome to post about their games
in spoiler tags please.
Checkpoints are required in order to check progress with others. the checkpoints are at 2000 Bc, 1000 BC, 0 AD, 1000 AD, 1500 AD, and the finish. if you finish before 1500 AD, simply post your final report, victory condition you acieved, and year.
Our leader is Alexander of the Greeks. He is Agg/Philo, with the phalanx as his UU. there are no UBs, seeing as this is a vanilla. I will be online for two more hours to answer questions, and then after that, I will be gone until July 21st.
Here are the game settings:

http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb43/hackapell_4/Picture1-5.png

and the starting position:

http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb43/hackapell_4/Picture2-4.png

Good luck! This game is open until July 23rd.

I can't play due to not having my vanilla disc but good luck to everyone who has a pop. It will be way cool! As Alex would say, dudes.

Singing off for the month, good luck!

Singing off for the month, good luck!

No save. No luck.

OH dear! that was a bit of a blooper wasn't it?:eek:

Looks like we will have to just provide our own start then.:mischief:

I don't have civ4 disc on me at the moment or i would of posted a save and sunday maybe the earliest i can get online again but monday is more likely.

How about you mice? can you post a save?

Sure. Just for a laugh we could roll a Warlords save and tell Hackapell he has to buy the expansion. :lol:

Kidding. So it's Fractal, Noble, Vanilla , Epic speed. I'll wait to see if Hack' turns up for a day. If no sign I can roll one.

Well no sign of Hackapell or a save from mice, so here is a start i rolled up.

Enjoy!:D

Not a bad capital site on the blue circle, but not a great one either. I'll settle in place and ,as it's Alex, maybe try a specialist approach.

With only 1 resource visible it means we will probably have juicy strategic resources turn up.

2000 BC or there abouts.

Things look good for a commerce econ, not specialists. Lots of grassland, dye and gems. I am going to hook up the stone that I found and go for the pyramids, to try to do some earlyish rush buying, combined with running merchants for upgrade gold.

A lot of neighbors on a big Pangea by the looks. Maybe 1 poor sod isolated somewhere.

Enemies far away for now . I might not go for a dom. victory. Feel peaceful ATM.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/82126/2000bc.jpg


And 1000 BC.

Anyone else having a go?

maybe....nevous, it is is my first one. how do you take a screen shot?

maybe....nevous, it is is my first one. how do you take a screen shot?

When you have the screen as you want it, press Prt Scn ,next to F12 usually.

It will appear in My Games/SidMeier'sCiv4/screenshots

It's a good idea to resize it using a graphics program to make it a bit smaller than it is or it will take up a lot of space on the page. If you cant, it doesn't matter.

Open civfanatics and go to 'upload' (top of the page) Here browse to
My Games/SidMeier'sCiv4/screenshots and select the screenshot. Press upload.

You will then be given the ,? I don't know, address of the image. copy it.

When writing your post select the little picture icon at the top of the reply box. In this feild paste the images address and click OK. It will appear in your post with image tags.

You can check if it's OK by trying preview post.

Good luck.

Open civfanatics and go to 'upload' (top of the page) Here browse to
My Games/SidMeier'sCiv4/screenshots and select the screenshot. Press upload.


You can also use sites like imageshack or photo bucket to upload your images and they will give you a link to paste into the thread.

I have played up to about 2000BC, but the post i wrote seems to have dissappeared while i was writing it:eek: . Oh well here is the save and a shot of the land near my capital.
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x52/mumin26179/Greece.jpg

Played up to 970BC:

I went up to 970BC becuz at that point i was just 2 turns from IW. As you can see it turned out that i had iron under thermo, which was handy as i didn't have any copper nearby. I can now produce swords, axemen and phalax, which will be soon deployed in an attack on Qin:D . Here is a shot of my local area:
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x52/mumin26179/greece2.jpg

I have been trying to get my pics inbedded in the text, instead of being as attachments, if this works the next post will be in more depth.
YYEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!:goodjob:

Yuo placed your cities in a different order than I did, but the result is the same. Your Themopolye is better than mine. i missed the cows to get the stone pronto. This was to grab the pyramids, but now the city is food poor and will stay that way.

Quinn's land is nice. I went up and took it. I will post some more saves too.

Mowque, where's the saves??? :)

It's a quiet thread but a nice map.

Here's 500 AD and 1000AD.

Peaceful development.

At 515 AD Quin dead, and the clearing of the jungle begins. Even though I'm philosophical with the pyramids, I dont want to go hard out war. The land is so good that I want to develop it for cottages and just use one city for GP, probably merchants because I like them.
Athens for an army a bit later.

Cathy cannot be trusted and she is annoyed with me because I just refuse anything she asks. I plan to vassalize or destroy both her and Bismark because they are both untrustworthy warmongerers. Cathy as a vassal will be especially good as a buffer. I would like to build for space after that.
It seems to make more sense to develop the land and get a big tech lead to attack with maces and knights, than use philo trait to bounce up to Liberalism for Nationalism/Milt trad. Cavalry war (yawn).

So just sorting out the cities. Caste system and a few artists to pop out the borders quickly,then all out growth of pop and commerce.Collosus built to encourage merchants later. Maces coming, Cathy the target.

played up to 5 AD:

During this round i declared war on Qin, around 265 BC, when i went to see Qin to declare war i saw this and had a good laugh!:lol:
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x52/mumin26179/Qinwar.jpg
Er...well Qin that will be you actually. :lol:
Anyway, i razed one city and quickly replaced it then took the rest, except one. This one i left becuz i wanted to get maths out of Qin for peace then let the city grow before taking it. On 5 AD i got my maths and made peace.

For now i will work on building up the cities and saving my tanking economy.

Here is greece at 5 AD:
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x52/mumin26179/greece3.jpg

give me a couple of hours..... *runs back to civ*

Mowque?....Mowque? Where did he go?:confused:
Mice?
Anyone???:(

I've almost played up to 1500AD will post this weekend.

I played on to 1500 but thought no-one else was. I'll post up tomorrow.

I played a strange game though because the land is so good for commerce, I didnt utilize the philo trait , and I had very poor production which is unusual for me. Too many commerce cities. So my war with Cathy was drawn out.

Hackapell talked about domination but I want to settle in for space on this map, which will mean reconfiguring cities for production before too long.

Here's the save. Kublai declared on me, but that just gives a good chance to defend a narrow border with lots of hills and forest. Fun for my maces.

From here settle in for space race, and head for state property to build workshop production in a couple of the commerce cities.

Right, after 5AD, my economy really did crash.:yuck: I was quickly down to 0% science and was still losing money after i deleted all sulplus units and switch over all my cities to commerce. Luckily with less than 4:gold: to go and my mouse hovering over the change civic icon, to switch to a cheaper civic, the crash bottomed out leveled off, before slowly picking up.

By 300AD i was back up to about 40% science/ 30% science, then getting calendar, currentcy, code of laws as well as building the Great light house and the hindu shrine, got my science back up to 50%, then i finished off Qin in 770AD.:D

After that i settled down to build up my new cities, managed to get my science up to 60% my 1000AD and was in the middle of researching civil service inorder to start irrigating my cities and to get macemen to take on germany.

After 1000AD i researched feudalism, MC, Machinery, Guilds and started to build up a army in sparta to invade german, only to have cathy, who was ahead of me in tech and power to DoW me!:mad: .

I managed to repel her stack of axemen and seaborne horse invasion behind sparta. my counter invasion quickly took the city close to sparta, then i headed south for the next city, while i bribe germany to DoW on cathy too. After taking cathy's westen cities i headed for the double holy city, finding and razing a small coastal city on the way. i was going to halt at that point and see if i could get some techs out of cathy, but i then noticed that bismark was doing rather well:sad: and had razed one city and taken another, and looked like he was heading for the capital!

Well i wasn't going to have any of that so i got my army together and went and took the capital after a hard fight. My army was getting a bit raggerity by now. By now i was getting worried by the number of german units running around and quickly set of and took the last russian city around 1442.

By now my science was running up to 70% and i was drawing into the tech lead. Then just before the 1500's i declared war on the romans. I wanted to take them out while i had macemen ect. so i could tech up to rifles and use them to take on germany and mongolia.

WOW mice. i just had a look at your save. how have kept so much forest!:eek: i didn't even know that there was a forest south of moscow, by the time i got there it had all gone!

I had a quick look at the rest of your world too, via worldbuilder, I can't believe how different it is from my game!

p.s. i just left the roman empire with just one size 2 city(no border pop as yet) helmed in by mountains and mongol land. hehe:goodjob:

As of 1813 mu'min rules the world!!!:king: having achieved world domination.:trophy:
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x52/mumin26179/victory.jpg

Here is what happened:
1600 got rifles
1674 got cannons
1690's declared war on bismark
1746 end of germany.
late 1700's got infantry and great merchant
next turn upgraded almost all to infantry
next turn declared war on khan and invade with infantry and cannons
late 1700's-1813 go through mongolia like a hot knife though butter finishing off the romans as i go.
1813 win!
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x52/mumin26179/placeinhist.jpg

A large foot army is the way to go with Alex. the combat I promotion really allows to build up a powerful army. with the right civics you can turn out really strong plaxaxs either for anti cav. or medics with healing I & II. Macemen with combat I and city raider I & II are good city takers too. i produced a huge army of these just before getting rifles so i could upgrade them.
Anyway here is the winning save:

:suicide: :suicide: :wallbash: :thumbsdown: :badcomp: :shake: :aargh:

Wow, What an idiot I must be ! I blanked on the save for a month! you guys have permission to slowly rot my guts out as punishment... :mischief:
Jeez, how stupid of me! note to self, next time, get someone to watch the thread for me when leaving. ah well...

Seeing as that was a massive error on my part, we could move on the the next NCG, which will start on most likly monday with Mehmed II. We could also continue with this game for a while, but I leave the desicion in your hands.

EDIT: I found my personal warm-up save to this NCG. It's a little different (semi-isolated start) but the gold in my capital made for a interesting game. Here's my earliest save for that.

It's a pity but I cant manage a dual install of Vanilla after installing BTS. Not the old save won't play. I have to abandon this game at 1500. Well it was an assured space victory anyway I think.

Nice dom victory Mu'min.

Well, with everyone done, I think we can move on.
A few things to report; over my vacation I made a list of all the leaders we would go through in an order. The list is:

5: Mehmed II
6: Stalin
7: Cyrus
8: Frederick
9: Napoleon
10: Victoria
11: Washingtoon
12: Huyana Capac
13: Hannibal
14: Ramesses II
15: Shaka
16: Saladin
17: Asoka
18: Qin Shi Huang
19: Tokugawa
20: Wang Kon
21: Kublai Khan
22: Peter
23: Ragnar Lodbrok
24: Julius Ceasar
25: Bismarck
26: Brennus
27: Louis XIV
28: Elizabeth
29: Isabella
30: Roosevelt
31: Montezuma
32: Mansa Musa
33: Hapshetsut
34: Mao Zedong
35: Genghis Khan
36: Catherine
37: Augustus Ceasar
(the list is subject to change)
I also picked up warlords today, so even though I'm a bit behind on the curve(macs get no gamer love), I am farther along than I was for about 8 hours today. I honestly don't know how tough the new AI is, so I will play through a game and start the pre-game thread at a later time, perhaps when I am nearly finished with my test run.
That's all for now. Thanks to everyone who participated, and I apoligize for the inconveinence.

The pre-game thread for our next game is here. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5717662#post5717662)