Cleopatra, Queen of Thebes, Queen of Egypt

As Cleopatra is the Queen of Thebes, so Thebes shall become the Queen of Cities.

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm9/Egypt/ptolemaic_th.gif

** WARNING ** SPOILER **

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm9/

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my god! I found the Japanese in something like 70 BC, but thats not the scary part - how were you able to colonize on their island? By the time I contacted Tokugawa he had thoroughly settled his homeland... lucky (or does 15 turns really make that much of a difference?). then again... this is my first emperor game.

Oh well... can't finish - I'm still playing mine. 800 BC and I'm still in the ancient age...

Zachriel - it´s so much fun to read your "civilization-adventures"!
You had a very strong army in proportional to your territory size.

Well done!

Nicely done, as usual! ;)

I didn't play this game and I still found your game to be very entertaining. Since so few people go for cultural victories, it's theoretically possible that you will win a medal, although not likely. Looks like an entertaining game, though I doubt I would have been nice enough to keep giving Xerxes his cities back waiting for a 20k culture victory.

And, if you have some time, maybe you might be interested in reading about my latest Deity game... :D

http://www.kalikokottage.com/civ3/sullla/

Originally posted by Sullla
[B]Since so few people go for cultural victories, it's theoretically possible that you will win a medal,

As you know, I don't play for score, but for the dramatic possibilities. :egypt:

I doubt I would have been nice enough to keep giving Xerxes his cities back waiting for a 20k culture victory.

It was actually much easier giving them back than trying to govern them. :) Plus, I had never yet had a City Culture Victory, and it suited the storyline. http://www.zachriel.com/gotm.htm


And, if you have some time, maybe you might be interested in reading about my latest Deity game... :D


Interesting how in your GOTM7 everyone ganged up on Russia. (It doesn't just happen to the human player, as some have claimed.)

Great ending. Unanimous UN victory. :king:

Zachriel,

Once again a great story. :goodjob:

It is always interesting reading your story line over the life of the game. Matrix should give out a special award for the best story of the game. It certainly makes for a lot more fun reading it this way, than looking at the threads.

Originally posted by Zachriel
Interesting how in your GOTM7 everyone ganged up on Russia. (It doesn't just happen to the human player, as some have claimed.)

Great ending. Unanimous UN victory. :king:

Sorry to butt in on your thread, but I was talking about my latest Deity game, one with the Romans on a large map. Spaceship Victory in 1250AD - would have been good enough for fastest spaceship victory if it had been GOTM7. :cool:

Zachriel, your presentation is as awesome as your game. What an effort, in every regard.

Originally posted by Sullla
Looks like an entertaining game, though I doubt I would have been nice enough to keep giving Xerxes his cities back waiting for a 20k culture victory.

Actually, it was natural to give it back. They were worthless cities to Egypt, probably unruly, and valued highly by the Persians. But when Xerxes attacked, the buffer zone made a great battleground! :cool: Here is what Cleopatra contemplates in 1828 AD. The picture is called "Task Ahead," but it didn't make the cut for the website. But the job looked huge, culturally complex, and unprofitable -- at least to Cleopatra. ;) Instead, she established a long term presence in coastal colonies; then later when hostilities broke out again, a buffer zone was created around Persepolis and Egypt would war in the buffer zone.

Battlegrounds are breeding grounds for Great Leaders.

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm9/ad1828-TaskAhead.jpg

Egypt's had 157,522 culture.

Originally posted by Sullla


Sorry to butt in on your thread, but I was talking about my latest Deity game, one with the Romans on a large map. Spaceship Victory in 1250AD - would have been good enough for fastest spaceship victory if it had been GOTM7. :cool:


This is a great shot from your game. What a tour de force of diplomatic skill!

http://www.zachriel.com/sullladiplomacy350.jpg

Contradicts those who say the AI's always ganging up on the human player. The silly grin on Caesar's face is a good touch.

Finally, it's up! Took you much longer than last month's game but it obviously was worth the effort :-) GOTM means 50% playing to me and 50% reading Zachriel's adventures!

Here is an interesting and unexpected culture border. This actually kinda of screwed up my advance for a turn or two. After capturing the surrounding cities, I would normally expect to have road and rail. In this case, it took a couple of extra turns to continue my forward deployment. (In some circumstances, this could have led to a flip if I had been counting on moving up the garrison from the rear.)

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm9/ad1705-CultureTunnel.jpg

(Note the infantry line advancing on the high terrain.)

Very Nice Spoiler !!! Great work. I stopped my game when the Yapanese started to attack me. I am learning much with this spoilers.

v. interesting writeup! Learned a thing or 2 too!

Hi Zachriel,

I enjoy your stories very much, they teach and entertain at the same time. Hopefully we all can read more of them in the future!!!

Ronald

This image is from Matrix's cheater thread (edited to remove the apparent cheat).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29324&pagenumber=4

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm9/cb-cracker.jpg

I liked the image and decided to see what my game looked like in 1575 BC. The multi-tool doesn't seem to work anymore for some reason, but this should provide the gist of my position.

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm9/bc1575-Homeland.gif

First, notice that cracker has six towns, Cartouche Bee has seven! I only have four, but am catching up quick (settlers huffing and puffing, rushing into position). In a couple of turns, my position will somewhat resemble crackers.

Also, I was only 29 turns from the Great Pyramids, and hoped that would give me a boost later on. I built the Pyramids for aesthetic reasons, but they paid off in the end. :goodjob:

Meanwhile, notice the difference in the Japanese position between cracker's and Cartouche Bee's games. Fascinating!

In the replays, I noticed the differences in the start positions as well.

If you look at my game vs CB's game, you see the Aztecs are at 3 cites while the Japanese are at 7 in CB's game and then in my game the Aztecs are at 5 and the Japanese are at 5. These positions add up to the same totals fairly well which indicates to me that something random and slightly disruptive happened to the Aztecs in CBs early game while a similar event happened to the Japanese in my game. This could have been barbs from a hut versus a tech, or it could have been a lucky combat sequence that fell to barbarians near the Aztecs and stunted them in CBs game while the lucky outcome shifted against the Japanese in my game.

These civs are too far apart to have been influenced by any direct action by each other and since I did not make contact with the Japanese until circa 630BC, I interpret the differences to be the result of random outcomes from the RNG. Since the RNG seed is preserved it is like there is a fixed string of of numbers that come out of the RNG and depending on the sequence of who pops what the good results can fall to one guy while the bad results fall to the other guy.

One thing you have to watch out for is taking too much infor out of a difference of just one or two cities because the snap shot in time may not show you who or what is running around in the form of settlers etc. Your example of having two settllers running fast and getting ready to settle towns to take you up from 4 to 6 is a great illustration of this point.

I have also been playing a large number of opening sequences where I compare the automated AI functions that control the workers, settlers, and explore units. I have played about 40 different positions with 10 to 15 different permutations per start position. (This is a preview of the next website info pages that may get released at the end of this month ;) ) Just running a stray barbarian into a square near these early automated units can distract them from their primary tasks for 5 to 7 turns and cause them to abandon lots of effort and shift near term priorities.

The minor variances due to the RNG outcomes add excitement to the games but they only serve to reinforce that nothing in the game is truly the same between two different game progressions after you have passed through 50 to 100 turns of active RNG events.

In 1575BC I founded only 5 cities but all of them had or almost have the tempe and Thebes have granary.

Yep, while you were building temples and Zach was building Pyramids I was building workers to link my cities, improve trade and add to my main cites to increase core production. Increasing the rate of production increases the rate of settler production and I don't waste my population by pop rushing settlers. ;)

Each method ended up producing the desired effect, getting into a position to win the game. :king:

Originally posted by Serg
In 1575BC I founded only 5 cities but all of them had or almost have the tempe and Thebes have granary.

Interesting. I only had a temple in Thebes (pop nearly six). I didn't build many temples outside Thebes until my expansion ended.

After reexamining the game, I was too heavy on warriors and too light on workers. Of course, I didn't know right away if Egypt was isolated or not, so I was preparing for possible military conflict. At least the excess warriors were good for military police as the population increased. By 1575 BC, all the Egyptian towns were connected, and most working tiles had been improved, including around Thebes. One worker had already been added to Thebes to help build the Pyramids. Still, a look at the game reveals many possible tweaks that should have improved my position.

May be it was my mistake with temples but I usually do it on hard game levels for preventing rioting. It is clear I connect my cities together and with luxury. And the granary force settlers output for city.

Originally posted by Serg
May be it was my mistake with temples but I usually do it on hard game levels for preventing rioting. It is clear I connect my cities together and with luxury. And the granary force settlers output for city.

I seriously doubt it was a mistake. There are many ways to play. I myself prefer military police during the expansion phase of the game. When the cities start to grow, then I build temples. However, your overall culture would be much higher, especially once the temples reach the venerable age.

I use military police also, exploration and security then expansion; culture is not normally a problem,except when I have to cut back the culture, cause I usually have 100,000 or more at the end anyway.

In the GOTM10 I didn't build temples (though it was Regent level) and it permits myself quickly spread on the map. I think it's a better strategy.;)

Serg,

I think it is important to emphasize that matching the strategy to the starting terrain, difficulty level, and civ traits is the important issue.

We need to be careful about saying things like "its a better strategy" even though this may just be a lanugauage translation issue out of context.

GOTM9 was on emperor difficulty so that gave only one content citizen to start each town. You had to build temples or military police or hook up luxuries to have your towns function at size 2 or above. Egypt was also a religious civ so temples were only 30 shields.

GOTM10 was on regent difficulty and France did not stary with the tech to build temples plus temples were 60 shields.

Plus you can factor in Archipeligo (about 10 landmasses with 6 civs) versus Pangea (one continent with 8 civs) .

These two situations were not "comparing apples to apples".

In fact, these two situations were about as close to opposites as you could get in the game.

It would be unlikely that we could compare strategies from GOTM9 to strategies in GOTM10 and make any credible claims that one strategy was better than the other strategy. This sort of statement sends the wrong message.

On the whole I agree with you, cracker. I'm sorry I didn't end my GOTM9. I could win ~1300AD.

Originally posted by Serg
In the GOTM10 I didn't build temples (though it was Regent level) and it permits myself quickly spread on the map. I think it's a better strategy.;)

Glad you found delaying the temple useful -- in some circumstances.

I agree with cracker that it depends heavily upon the situation. Just as important, your later game will depend heavily on how you play the early game. For instance, early temples will help with a culture victory. A faster early expansion may help with a more aggressive finish.

You know. One thing leads to another. . . .

I agree with Cracker. Different levels/maps requires completely different strategies. I GOTM10, I didn't have any temples or cathedrals apart from rushing the 10 culture points and then selling them! I didn't have any libraries either! I couldn't afford any cultural expansion without winning through domination.

Emperor is a complete different ball game. If you don't have luxuries and you want to fight with your units rather than keeping them as MP's, you often need early temples!

You can always sell the, later to stop the culture win, once you've got luxuries!

Of course cracker is right about making generalizations.

We rarely seem to talk about the games after we have all finished so I just thought I would comment on why my position was developed the way it was (since it was posted). I built my cities to cover that eastern portion of the Island so that I would not have to worry about barbs and make it so that any attack would have to be an invasion by water from that side, this freed my defensives to focus on the frontiers. Although sparing with barbs can really add to your experience and cash flow as cracker has demonstrated, I prefer secure my positions and limit the avenues of counter attack.

I think that if you use a builders approach, that at higher difficulties having more, smaller cites factor into the equation on how to combat lower levels of general happiness (lower difficulties do not force the issue). I think that using your commerce to support temples in your core cites is a fair trade off for larger city size (and increased city corona) but personally, I use the luxury slider to assist along with settler or worker production to spread out my borders with city creation until I meet up with another civ. That is the point that I can then switch production to more military adventures. The reason that I take that approach is that even when going for a domination you need to settle large amounts of land, so settle uncontested areas first, then fight wars to grab more land.

Building wonders is also very dependant on the individual's goals. IIRC, my first wonder was produced in my forth city, that was the Lighthouse and that was based on of the map type. Pyramids are usually one of my favorite Wonders to build but the map type and the Island I was on seemed to steer me away from that course. These Wonder producing cities are the ones that I build temples in cause they will grow over time.

If a player is going for conquest, they can figure that a fair amount of their growth will be from capturing cities so early military production is a very easy decision. Produce as much military as the civ can support before considering the finer things in life. ;)

CB

PS: Serg I'm pretty sure from the posts in GOTM9 that you would have finished up in the 1300's, probably with a conquest. :) Would have got the medal!