The Immortal Cookbook is a concurrent succession game series aiming to help readers learn how to play and win at Immortal level in Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword, v3.17.

Last update:
Round 3 finished, best save is Abegweits's. Round 4 started and will finish on Dec. 7. Play is up to victory from Abegweit's save. See post#2 in this thread (below this one).

The rules of the IMC series are borrowed from the original series played on Monarch (see Monarchist Cookbook Bullpen (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=272935)):

1. A 4000 BC save is generated.
2. All players on the roster play one round from that save.
3. All saves are uploaded with a corresponding report in a spoiler.
4. Each player who posted a save for the round votes for 3 saves: best save receives 3 points, 2nd place 2, and 3rd place 1. You cannot vote for your own save.
5. Steps 2-4 are repeated using only the previous best save until Victory. In case of a tie players will continue from the save they chose as best among those in the tie. If a player has not voted for any of the saves in the tie, he can choose from which of them to play. If a player's save is included in the tie he can play from it if he wants to.

Settings for this game:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII-settings.jpg

The game was generated with random leader & civilization (but not unrestricted leaders). Note that the speed is Normal, there are no huts and no events.

Starting position:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII-start.jpg

This is the first save I got, and it hasn't been checked for anything (metal/horses availability, isolation, etc.). The idea of the series is to win all kinds of situations, so we'll play whatever comes our way.

Roster:
- ABigCivFan
- Araneya
- RRRaskolnikov
- Jet
- Kaleb
- Abegweit
- KingMorgan
- carl corey

Rounds:
Round 0: The starting save (this post)
Round 1: 4000 BC - 1AD - we have a tie for first place between ABigCivFan & Abegweit.
Round 2: 1AD - 600AD - best save: RRRaskolnikov
Round 3: 600AD - 1200AD - best save: Abegweit
Round 4: 1200AD - victory - currently playing. Ending Dec. 7th.

Please include your username in the save name.

Links to the winning saves & reports for round 1:
- ABigCivFan: 4000BC-1480BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297415#19) and 1480BC-1AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297415&page=2#29), save at 1AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193234&d=1225661457)

- Abegweit: 4000BC-1AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297415&page=2#37), save at 1AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193555&d=1225993172)

---------------

Links to the winning save & report for round 2:
- RRRaskolnikov: 1AD-600AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297415&page=6#101), save at 600AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=194339&d=1226752694)

In order to see the end result of our plans for round 2 everyone is allowed to play from his own save if he wants to. Otherwise play will continue from RRRaskolnikov's save.

---------------

Links to the winning save & report for round 3:
- Abegweit: 600AD-1200AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297415&page=11#209), save at 1200AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=195732&d=1227935733)

Round 4 from Abegweit's save to victory, play ends on Dec. 7.

Pericles? Well I already have a game with him going but he is one of my favourites. Sign me up.

Unlike gliese I don't like it @ normal :(. What can one do though? IMO we should just alternate, but that means it's time for normal anyway :p.

Capitol looks fairly sound!

I've played 63 turns. I think you're using epic speeds rather than normal speeds as turn 62 on normal corresponds to 1520 bc and turn 63 to 1480 bc.

I'll wait with posting until I'm sure we're agreed on the correct amount of turns, how about extending round 1 another 37 turns to 100 total? 63 is a bit low for round 1 I think to get any significant deviations. Whatever is fine with me though as long as everyone is on the same page.

Oops, yeah, I took the rounds from the Monarch games which are on Epic Speed. I have no idea where the round would be on Normal. I'm not sure if it's really worth it to make round 1 longer. After all, in the Emperor Cookbook we took out an AI by 1500BC. Even if that one was on Epic speed I think there's still place for diversion if we keep the round at its current length. Anyway, all input from other players on whether we should make the round longer or not is welcome. I'll also play the 63 turns tonight to see where it leaves me, and we'll make a decision after that.

How do you go about calculating in which year a certain number of turns will leave you anyway?

Hi everyone :hatsoff:,

Subscribed! (one more game yeah :lol:)
Good luck to all!

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

edit: I agree with Gliese about a 100 turns round... that way saves will have more variations and we could learn more things I think... but it's up to you Carl!

100 turn rounds on normal means it'll only be 2-3 rounds though...

100 turn rounds on monarch means it'll only be 2-3 rounds though...

you mean normal instead of monarch no? We could reduce the length of rounds after the first one...

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

Signing in.

I'll try to throw up a save early next week.

I'll try this one !

Pericles is the leader I wish I can play successfully : phi / cre + odeon + invincible axeman looks like a very strong early combo to me, yet all the immo game I tried with him ended to be miserable failures !

I'd like to give this a bash too, first time I'll have tried a succession game :)

Well, it's not a classic succession game, as instead of the players taking turns we're each playing on our own. Of course you're still welcome to play. :D

oyzar, are you signing up for this?

By the way, the number of people in the roster will not be limited for this game. But the roster will be fixed at the end of the first round of playing (and before the votes, of course).

Pericles? Well I already have a game with him going but he is one of my favourites. Sign me up.

Ah, drat, I missed the fact that it was your online Deity game that was with Pericles! I wasn't going to take into account offline games (couldn't even if I wanted to since I didn't know the roster), but I was thinking I'd restart if I hit any of the leaders/civs currently involved in the "main" games in the Strategy & Tips forum. Somehow I missed yours. :blush:

@Carl: the start is very nice (food +philo...) but feel free to restart with another leader (regarding Gliese Deity game)...

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

edit: Gliese has already played... don't bother with this then

Yeah, by the time I realized what game he was talking about he had already played his round. We'll play from this save, but I'll try to take better care for the next rounds.

The start being so nice* actually makes me fear we're isolated! :lol: But one of my goals is to learn to play isolated starts too, I'm not very good of those. I should try my hand at some LHC challenges sometime...

*floodplains+ :food: resource, :) resource improvable with the starting techs, lots of rivers, riverside plains hills... wow...

I was in mood for some quick screwing up so... i did it.:lol:


i managed magnificantly displace cities while forgetting to tech wheel before having three cities. Also I got used to epic so timing was awfully of time.

I started mowing 2E. (yeah loads of food and -2 hills). Sharing floodplains idea.:lol: If you look at where Sparta is you see i managed to waste at least four:lol:, cause i looked for some good place with fresh water. (1E that was).

I do not recall why i made Corinth at all, which misses horses nicely:lol: And that workboat could be whipped three turns earlier.

Techs were agriculture, when i decided to gamble with bronze, did not find teched archery since barb archers ate my scout when i finished animal husbandry (still hurting myself with no roads), wheel and started pottery.


I will give save here, so you could tell how awfull i am:lol:. And one thing sure my girl is right I am not sober enough for driving.

Edit: I was told to continue this disaster until 1AD. Which i will, since it is worth to learn things from your own mistakes.
Also please remove me from rooster thing. Immortal is for fun and screwing. I will need to master Emperor first. Thank you.

Edit2:
Well, land is in such quality and quantity that even i had hard time screwing it totally. Although i will need to relearn at playing normal. After fifth city i actually lost control of anything remotely close to micromanagenement. And i hardly recall chopping anything. Including jungle above rice which doesn't make me happy.
And somehow Aesthetics was not so great trade bait, but if that means Immortal AI's killed they research while rexing into land of similar quality...

Dropped second save for proper date

Ah, drat, I missed the fact that it was your online Deity game that was with Pericles! I wasn't going to take into account offline games (couldn't even if I wanted to since I didn't know the roster), but I was thinking I'd restart if I hit any of the leaders/civs currently involved in the "main" games in the Strategy & Tips forum. Somehow I missed yours. :blush:

It's no problem, Pericles is one of the leaders I have a hard time getting enough of, he's like Monty in that regard.

oyzar: Yes as Raskolnikov said, the rounds after round 1 could be shortened. They take longer to play anyhow and you don't need as many to drastically change the direction of a game the farther into it you get so that was my idea.

4000BC-1480BC:



Settle in place. good mix of FPs, food and prod. Health is a slight concern.

My scout got to Woodsman2, got the map well explored. We have a lot of land. I wanted to set up a strong economy before go crazy on settlers, so I got Agri-wheel-pottery before BW to set up the cottages in capital ASAP.

Now at 1480BC, already had 1 village in capital, 5 cottages in development while produing settlers. hooked up wheat early, built granary/Barracks in capital for constant archer/settler/worker production.

1 settler enroute to settle stone+rice+2 silk to south East, block off Khmer.

the scout fog busting near fish/dye/cow/silk

got 1 more Cover archer up north and try to get him unlock HE.

Now just steady settler/archer/worker combo in capital to grab more land.


Tech:

Writing already in, Getting sailing for trade routes, it is much faster than connecting via land.

Next might go with IW to see if any Iron near by and clear the jungle on rice.


1480BC Capital:

Switching between cottages and mines for Settler/Archer productions.

chopping 2nd settler now.

http://img01.picoodle.com/img/img01/3/11/1/f_1480BCcapitm_2350605.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/1/f_1480BCcapitm_2350605.jpg&srv=img01)


1480BC:

explored map,

1 settler enrounte to settle stone/rice/2 silk

http://img02.picoodle.com/img/img02/3/11/1/f_1480BCsettlm_0478db8.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/1/f_1480BCsettlm_0478db8.jpg&srv=img02)

Oops, yeah, I took the rounds from the Monarch games which are on Epic Speed. I have no idea where the round would be on Normal. I'm not sure if it's really worth it to make round 1 longer. After all, in the Emperor Cookbook we took out an AI by 1500BC. Even if that one was on Epic speed I think there's still place for diversion if we keep the round at its current length. Anyway, all input from other players on whether we should make the round longer or not is welcome. I'll also play the 63 turns tonight to see where it leaves me, and we'll make a decision after that.

How do you go about calculating in which year a certain number of turns will leave you anyway?

Empires progress slower (date-wise) on normal speed though. You loose a lot of turns to Worker/Settler/Army movement at the faster speeds. A rush by 1500 BC on Epic is a walk in the park. On Normal, it's ace play with the suspicion of luck, not often possible. IMO 4000-1500 BC is too short on Normal. It's near impossible to acheive anything worth discussing in such a narrow time-frame. We're going to end up with a whole lot of bland opening saves and discussion along the lines of "gee, did you move your archer west to block that barbarian..? I moved mine north...". Also the most risk free save is going to get the votes, barring any interesting oracle shot attempts from being chosen.

Just my sincere input. I think 4000 - 1000 BC or even 4000 - 0 AD would work much better.

Ok then. I've looked through a few of my replays and indeed there's not much happening by 1500BC. I'd like a second opinion whether this should go up to 1AD (there's no 0 :P) or a bit earlier (and when) and then we'll switch. There are three players who've already played this round, I'll ask them to continue playing up to the new date once we decide what it is.

I guess the total number of rounds will decrease on Normal speed. Something like: 4000BC - 1AD - 600AD - 1200AD - 1600AD - 1800AD - victory should be enough. What do you guys think?

... Thread has been linked in Monarchist Cookbook Bullpen, Carl Corey has been noted as host and map-provider, and the normal gamespeed option is emphasized.

Good riddance, Immortals!

Ok then. I've looked through a few of my replays and indeed there's not much happening by 1500BC. I'd like a second opinion whether this should go up to 1AD (there's no 0 :P) or a bit earlier (and when) and then we'll switch. There are three players who've already played this round, I'll ask them to continue playing up to the new date once we decide what it is.

I guess the total number of rounds will decrease on Normal speed. Something like: 4000BC - 1AD - 600AD - 1200AD - 1600AD - 1800AD - victory should be enough. What do you guys think?

If you've checked/calculated the new dates there they sound fine to me. If the game is over quickly then just start a new one as long as there's interest. I don't like to drag out games to long anyhow since it's the first half that is more interesting so for me that's part of what makes me enjoy normal speed the most.

Well, all those dates exist, so at least I've got that part ok this time! :D I don't mind the game finishing more quickly either. Six rounds means a month and a half, we might even reduce it to five if we find that the pace is too slow. For now, those are new new dates. I'll PM those who've already played round 1 (well, except for you, Gliese, you'll read this right away :) ) to tell them they have to continue playing up to 1AD.

Diamondeye, thanks for linking to us.

sorry about the lack of input to the previous game guys. i have just got back from the joshua tree, so i haven't been available for about 2 weeks now.

Round 1, First 100 Turns


Settle in place, looks like a nice capital to me.

Eventually I meet Suryavarman II (bad), Bismarck (okay), Catherine (bad), Darius (good!), Wang Kon (good! a weak AI!), and Lincoln (good! just as weak as Wang usually is and he's right next to an aggressive Suryavarman).

By the way why does Sury farm his cow?
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0001-2.jpg
Anyway....

I researched Animal Husbandry before Bronze Working as I figured there was likely to be horse nearby.

And I was right.

City #2 claims horses
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0002-2.jpg

City #3 serves multiple purposes. Blocks sury, a production city, and generates quick Great Scientists for me.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0003-2.jpg

Settled city #4 for commerce, city #5 for blocking purposes and to get another health resource for capital (fish!).

By turn 100:

I have teched (Fish/Hunt) Agri - Min - AH - BW - Pot - Writ - Aest - Myst - Poly - Lit - Priest - Code of Laws (not completed). Techs are listed in the order that I researched them.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0004-3.jpg
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0005-3.jpg
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0006-3.jpg
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0007-3.jpg

oh yes and guess what? Great Scientist #2 will come out of Corinth in....ONE TURN! Maybe Philosophy bulb with Meditation and Alphabet traded or researched or another academy?





EDIT - crap! my bad I thought the first round was the first 100 turns and not to 1 AD...I'll probably play the extra turns sometime later although there's no way I can finish the next 20ish turns by nov 6.

Round 1 (4000BC-1AD):



Techs: Ag, TW, Mining, Pottery, Archery, BW, AH, Writing, Alphabet, IW(trade), Sailing, Maths, Masonry, Construction, Currency (in progress)

4000: I decided to settle in place after moving the scout southeast. After settling I discovered that this meant I missed the wheat but Athens looks like a good candidate for a cottage bureacracy capital and with all those FPs it doesn't really need more food. I'll happily give the wheat to another city in this case.
I started with worker and Agriculture to improve the corn. After the worker I built a couple of warriors then a settler.

3640: Ag -> The Wheel. With all the FPs Athens have 4 unhealthiness and so health is going to be a priority which means I want to hook up the corn asap. TW also leads to Pottery which I decided to get early for this game. BW can be delayed a little since there's only 4 forests and all of them will be needed for health for quite some time. The ivory and unforested hills means I can still get production tiles up and running without it.

3280: TW-> Mining.

3240: Meet Bismarck, founder of Buddhism.

3120: Meet Lincoln.

2960: Mining -> Pottery. Meet Sury and discover he's our closest neighbour, just a little to the east.

2680: Pottery -> Archery.

2600: Stonehenge BIDL (Bismarck).

2480: Archery -> BW.

2120: I found Sparta NE of Athens. This will be a good GP/Production city.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP470000.jpg

2040: BW -> AH. I don't discover copper so I shoot for horses, AH also enables me to hook up the sheep asap.

1840: AH -> Writing. Horses appear SE of Athens so I didn't consider IW here.

1800: TGW BIDL (Bismarck). I adopt Slavery to start whipping (granary in Sparta).

1520: Writing -> Alphabet. None of the others have Alphabet so I start to research it at 0% accumulating gold.

1320: Whip Library in Sparta. Mostly build some archers in Athens and a worker then start on another settler.

1200: Buddhist Shrine BIDL (Bismarck).

1080: Put down the first of two cities to block Sury and aquire horses.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP730000.jpg

Up to this point my production has been lower than usual since Athens has been focusing on commerce and have not had any chops and few whips but Sparta liberally applied the whip to try to make up for it.

1000: Judaism FIDL.

925: Lincoln converts to buddhism.

875: Alphabet -> Sailing. To enable foregin trade and in an attempt to trade Alpha for IW and part of Sailing to Lincoln.

850: Sury is slower to expand toward me than expected so I found the second blocker to claim clam and stone.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP810000.jpg

825: Despite several turns of research into Sailing Lincoln is unwilling to trade it and IW for Alpha so I settle for just IW since I'm ready to improve the rice for Corinth.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP820000.jpg

I discover iron in two places nearby, one of them in a good position.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP820001.jpg

775: Meet Darius.

725: Sailing -> Maths. I consider getting prereqs for trading for Monarchy next but with a few happy resources, odeons and the like I can grow my cities to a decent size and unlock War Elephants so I opt for Maths instead with a secondary goal of getting The Hanging Gardens.
Meet WK, founder of Judaism.
Athens completes library and hires two scientists to get my first GS.

700: Argos is founded to claim cows and iron before Sury gets it.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP870000.jpg

650: TOA BIDL (Bismarck). What a hog.

600: Oracle BIDL (Bismarck). Seems like Bismarck is going for a WE, obsolete style.

550: Pyramids BIDL (Darius). Then again, that's a pretty key piece I believe.

500: My first GS is born in Athens and I construct an Academy there.

475: Buddhism spreads to Argos and Lincoln asks me to convert the same turn. I agree.
Christianity FIDL.

450: Meet Catherine who is jewish. Sury converts to buddhism.

425: Catherine demands IW and I acquiesce.

375: Maths -> Masonry. Needed for both Construction and THG.

350: Masonry -> Construction. Sparta starts on an Aqueduct.
I take part in a great work.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1010000.jpg

175: Darius converts to judaism. I keep OB with him (along with all the buddhists).

100: Confucianism FIDL (Wang Kon). I found my sixth city to get the two silver and crab by the northern shore. I decided to build the city to get Surys silver in the first culture ring to steal it as quickly as possible. Sury's even improved it for me, what a nice guy. I can probably trade it back to him for gold later, it's a win-win situation!

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1110000.jpg

75: GS #2 born in Athens, I settle him.

50: Sparta completes The Hanging Gardens.
Colossus BIDL (Bismarck).
AP BIDL (Bismarck). I vote for Bizzie in the first election and he wins earning me some diplo points. Bismarck built all wonders but The Colossus in Berlin.

25: Construction -> Aesthetics. I finish Construction and put slider to 0% again while teching Aesthetics. A check at the tech screen revealed that none of the AIs has gotten it yet so I think TGL is within reach.
After thinking it over though I decided that teching Aesthetics is probably not the best course of action at this point. I got distracted by the shiny Great Library and failed to consider that I'm not industrous, don't have marble and can't trade for it and don't have alot of forests to chop in any case. So I changed research to Currency next, I'm #2 in techs in any case so massbulbing might not be necessary for a shot at Liberalism or whatever down the line.

1AD: End of round 1, some screenshots to follow.

Northen part of empire:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1150000.jpg

Southern part:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1150001.jpg

Satellite map, east:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1150006.jpg

Satellite map, southwest:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1150007.jpg

Shot of Athens:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1150005.jpg

Techs:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1150002.jpg

Relations:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1150008.jpg

Mutually worst enemies:
Sury and WK
Catherine and Lincoln
Me, Darius and Bismarck have no worst enemies at this point.

Demographics:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn131/Gliese5812/ICP1150004.jpg

Looking good economically. I have alot of room to grow and expand and good relations with my eastern neighbours, although Sury and Bismarck are both kindof backstabby. Unfortunately the western neighbours are going to become my enemies unless something changes, putting me right in the middle of religious conflict and other nasty bussiness.
OR should be considered if one wants to cement good relations with Sury. Another option is invasion by War Elephants. That would anger the buddhist block though and right now there's lots of great land to expand to in the west. Cathy might be kept at Cautious by adopting HR and agreeing to her demands. The same might be possible with WK and Caste System.

DMOC, I'm thinking of extending this round if people don't see the posts about the new length. I've already PMed those who have played the round before the modification was in place and I'll send PMs to all those who post old-length rounds to let them know.

1AD



1480BC, I used my first settler to settle Sparta which is a nice prod city. Since Athens is busy working cottages, i need a prod city as the 2nd city. Stone can wait.

Key Tech path since 1480BC:

1. Alphabet for trading (trade for a bunch of techs including IW)
2. Monarchy for HR. Athens should work as many as Cottages ASAP, so HR is the best way to achieve this early.
3. Beeline COL/CS for Beauracracy (8 more turns).
4. Currency

here is current game state at 1 AD.

5 cities settled, had key health/metal/happy resources, 1 settler enroute to settle aother FP rich city to the West.

http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/3/11/2/f_1ADempirevim_1be90f6.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/2/f_1ADempirevim_1be90f6.jpg&srv=img26)


Athens. Adding 50% commerce to this city in 8 turns.

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/11/2/f_1ADcottagecm_aa3476d.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/2/f_1ADcottagecm_aa3476d.jpg&srv=img33)


Sparta. it has 20 base :hammers: per turn, building Swords every 2 turns to bust some barbs.

Later it can produce more settler/workers for the empire.

http://img29.picoodle.com/img/img29/3/11/2/f_1ADspartaunm_47b7871.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/2/f_1ADspartaunm_47b7871.jpg&srv=img29)

Now I am running HR to grow cities large quickly, 8 workers really help. Sharing Budda with 3 near neighbors, Sury has no major military threat yet. Now completely blocked off Sury to the West.

COL already in, which means i could expand further into south and south west jungles without going broke. It is interesting that we have so much uncontested land this game which really makes this a "builder" game early on.

Soirana, from what I've seen you're doing quite nicely on Emperor in the current Emperor Cookbook. :) But since you asked, I'll remove you from this game's roster. See you around.

Carl is right, you should give this a go...

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

Hello! Is it okay if I join this game? I'm not at all an comfortable Immortal player but it could be a valuable learning experience. I already played the first round (up to 1 AD)


Excellent start: p-hills for hammers and lots and lots of f-p for food. Ivory for happy and Corn for even more food. Settle in place immedietly.
Ok, since we have production I think going for a weird start.
Start Agriculture & Worker
Turn 3: Meet S-man II
Turn 5: S-man has stone and ivory, hmm
Turn 7: Meet Bismarck and find tundra north of S-man
Turn 9: Agriculture in. Seems S-man will control the passage to the Eastern parts of our world (ie where B came from). Start Wheel.
Turn 10: Scout owns lion in the open. Moves to tundra hill for vision+healing defense.

Turn 11: A forest grows on the non-river p-hill!
Turn 14: Buddhism FIDL (3440 BC)
Turn 15: Worker finished, start scout. Farming corn for food+health (Im at 5 health of 6 already)
Turn 17: Scout finish healing, got hit by a lion earlier.
Turn 18: Wheel in, start Archery.
Turn 20: Scout kills another lion, worker starts camp.

Turn 21: Athens grows, mm to finish growth+scout+archery in 5 by working corn and gl-forest
Turn 23: Scout already at 4 xp, owns a wolf. Hindu FIDL (3080)
Turn 24: Camp finishes, so I switch gl-forest to a fp so I will still grow to size 2 in 2 turns, even if I switch to ivory next turn. Start road corn.
Turn 25: Granary will be huge in capitol, with health issues and both corn and wheat nearby. Scout => Archer Archery => Mysticism
Turn 27: Archer+Growth+Mysticism in 5. Let's see what happens when they come in.
Turn 28: New scout gets eaten at 24% odds :( . I see a warrior near my old scout :-o! It was not long ago I was playing Monarch, not really used to Immortal after half a game. Start farming wheat.
Turn 29: Meet WK. Scout finished healing.

Turn 31: Find a nice city spot with Sheep and Fur that fits nicely with my Capitol. I also have the Wheat+Silk spot with either Cows or Sheep.
Turn 32: Everything finishes. I see that Meditation+Priesthood will take 16 turns while SH takes 17. Would be quite the steal if I could get both^^. So I look in the forum for what is the regular date for S-H on Immortal, since again, im not used to Immortal. I would finish it about 2100 BC probably, which feels a bit late, especially with Hindu Bismarck. So I will not gamble, better to be safe than sorry:) Archer=>Archer Mysticism=>Meditation Worker starts another farm and Archer start scouting.
Turn 35: And surely enough, at 2600 BC the SH is build by Buddhist Korea. Will be intresting to see what role the religions will have on this game.
Turn 37: Find stone with my Archer. Archer=> Archer

Turn 40: Meditation => Priesthood
Turn 41: Scout gets eaten by Archer in jungle. I hate exploring jungle with Scouts.
Turn 42: Archer=>Archer Also there is a jungle rice and fish near the stone location.
Turn 45: Priesthood=>Mining Archer=>The Oracle due in 15 turns.
Turn 47: I pick of an damaged barb archer with one of my 3 scouting archers. The GW BIDL (2160 BC). Start pre-building another farm while waiting for mining.

Turn 51: Mining => Writing Need it for CoL. Kill a warrior.
Turn 56: My worker is building mines for my two plains hills. One of my archers loses against a barb one at 50%.
Turn 59: Kill a damaged archer. Got 5 xp now on my southern Archer.

Turn 61: In 1560 I build the Oracle and found Confucianism in Athens. I plan on using Bureaucracy later and having a Shrine is very powerful then. So my unusual opening moves are for a longterm plan. Land can always be captured later.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193420&stc=1&d=1225824298
Turn 69: I found Sparta by the wheat and ToA is BIDL (1240 BC). Both cities building an Archer

Turn 70: BW => AH Revolt to Slavery
Turn 73: I 3p-whip an Settler
Turn 74: Doesn't look like S-Man settled the stones yet, I head that way. Athens starts Archer.
Turn 75: Worker finishes G-L mine in Sparta, moves towards future Stonetown. Athens puts some hammers into a Creative Libary (either that or a temple, and I need the research)
Turn 78: Sparta Archer=>Archer until size 3 (2 turns) then start worker.
Turn 79: Found Corinth and start a WB which will be chopped. AH=>Pottery Also seems that I will be able to finish the Libary until my next whip. I want to whip it with my production bonus to it and put the overflow into something. Or I could do it the other way around. Start Temple in Athens.

Turn 80: Judaism FIDL (875 BC) Sparta starts Worker (Seems Wang Kong got it as he adopted Org. Rel. the turn after)
Turn 84: Meet Lincoln and the first GP (a prohet) is born in Korea and WK uses ut to build the shrine. Some barbs closing in on Athens from the west, call back an Archer from fogbusting and the one from Sparta. Copper in the far southeast. 2p-whip temple in Athens.
Turn 86: One of the barb archers kill one of mine at 26% odds, I then kill it with the other Archer I brought here. I build the Kong Miao and meet Catharine (725 BC). Looks like were all on a big continent. Sparta Worker=>Archer
Turn 87: I kill a Warrior. Pottery=>Masonry Start Granary at Corinth.
Turn 89: I lose an Archer and my camp. Move out my last and healing archer in Athens to finish the barb Archer. Start Granary in Athens.

Turn 90: The Warrior pillages the road too, I get my archer back to the city.
Turn 91: Archer=>Settler in Sparta. Kill the last barb in my lands.
Turn 92: The Mids are built in Germany who also have ToA and tGW
Turn 93: Masonry => Mathematics S-Man put down a city near the cows, disabling me from building the city I wanted to build on the gl-hill southeast of the cows.
Turn 94: Granary => Worker in Athens
Turn 95: 2p-whip both the settler in Sparta and the Worker in Athens.
Turn 96: Athens =>Archer Sparta=>Granary New Worker rebuilds camp. Send settler north to get silver and block off S-man
Turn 97: Archer=>Monastery in Athens Korea build tGL
Turn 98: Found Thebes at Silver Crabs location. Start WB in Thebes.

Turn 101: 2p-Whip Granary at Stonetown.
Turn 102: Continue Libary in Stonetown. I think I forgot to mention, I met Darious a couple of turns back. All civs met now, no crazy Alex or Monty, but S-Man and Catharine could maybe decide to do some warring. Maybe Bismarck too. 2 financial, 1 industrious.
Turn 105: Monastery=>Settler in Athens. Hindu spread to Silverycrabs.
Turn 106: Libary finished (got 2p-whip) in Sparta (Granary also finished earlier) I want to pop philosophy with a scientist from Sparta. Start Barracks since it got some production.
Turn 108: Settler 2p-whipped in Athens, I want it to grow so no 3p-whip.
Turn 109: Start Misionary in Athens.
Turn 110: Judaism Shrine built. Mathematics=> Cosntruction

Turn 112: Stonetown Libary=>Courthouse Silverycrabs WB=>Granary Found Corinth again by horses.
Turn 115: I pop Silver in Sparta. I have gifted the different ais some cheap religion techs for no relationboost but so that I can trade with them all at the same time, because I fear if I trade with one then he will sell it to the rest. Now I see WK has CoL so time to trade: I get Monarchy, Iron Working and Alphabet. And time's up!

I read some about Obsolete's WE/SSE and I thought it would be pretty cool tro try something similiar with alot of settled great prophets from the oracle/angkor wat/shrine running tons of 1:gold:/2:hammers:/3:science:(with representation)/6:gp: Priests in the capitol. With all the settled priests and bureaucracy it would probably get pretty crazy.
So with this in mind, I figured I would probably put at least Wall Street there for good :gold: and then I should probably get an shrine too. So this plan dictated my early game.

Unfortunatly S-Man II took the Cows/Iron spot, but I figure that I should probably attack him if I should attack anybody, so it isn't lost forever.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193422&stc=1&d=1225824300
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193421&stc=1&d=1225824298
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193423&stc=1&d=1225824298
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193424&stc=1&d=1225824298

Pros:
The Oracle and Confucianism Shrine in Capital
2 GPs coming soon (Prophet and Scientist)
Silver at Sparta :D
A lot of potential

Cons:
Not a good research rate atm, not many techs discovered
Not that many cities, lost cows/iron site
Weak military

Sure. Everyone can play it. :)

Hi immortals!,

I have played my round... will edit this post tonight with a report and a save featuring...
the new 007, James "Pericles" Bond :lol:

The report…

I began by a nice :smoke: move…
With such a nice SP and no AIs met by turn 15, I thought we were isolated… so building the GW was my first priority. Of course it’s a pangea map style with everybody in the same land mass… :lol:

Anyways we got it in 2000BC and start the greeks on the spy path…

First techs were: Agriculture, Mining, Masonry, Archery, The Wheel, Bronze Working, Pottery, AH, and Writing.

After that I drop the slider to 0% science to make cash (and then run deficit research with libraries) for quite some turns.

Meanwhile, I settled:
1) Sparta for sheep+wheat
2) Corinth for cows+silk (and iron but didn’t know) + blocking
3) Thebes for cow+horses +another silk

I latter settled Argos for sheep + 2 furs and a floodplain
Finally I whipped a settler in 25BC in Athen to complete Khmer blocking (the settler is heading south right now).

Some words on Athen:
I know I will surely get :whipped: for going no cottages in this city but I felt this would be more efficient prod wise (as I delayed expansion at first for the GW, I whipped this city hard) and I ran scientists most of the time… and finally I plan to make this city the main GPfarm (it’s not like if my save has a chance :lol: )

After this building phase, I restarted the research… tech path:
Aesthetics, alpha (traded), Myst (traded), IW (traded), Meditation, Priesthood, Poly (traded), Monarchy (traded thanks to Poly), Math (traded), Sailing (stolen!), COL (6 turns to go).

I got 2 great spies: the first one explored and is dispo, the second one infiltrated Sury (closest AI so best for a spy strat).

Religious and diplo situation is messy: 3 religions are currently used so I am still in atheism…

Only one war so far: Cathy has just declared on Wang… I hope he can contain her a little… because I can already see a red border west of Athen…

Military: :lol: no comments…
Civics: HR, slavery

So I have 5 cities and soon another one, and the tech situation is under control:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0301.jpg

I lack workers (only 6) and my cities are still small… but I put some thoughts on where we could go from this save:

The plan would be to grow Athen as much as possible after COL (6 turns to go, then switch in HR + caste) and then run max number of scientists to bulb paper -> edu -> lib while we stop research after CS (and up espionnage slider). Does someone know if Contitution is bulbable (for jails and rep)?
Meanwhile try to steal the guild path from Sury… and capture some of the barbs city west of Athen before Cathy gets all the good land. Keep nearby AIs happy with civics (HR for Cathy and OR for Sury) and stay alive until we can kill one of those immortals…

Pro: had fun, still alive (I play Immortal in marathon so I was a little nervous at first), original approach, good tech situation
Cons: few workers, cities by far too small (after playing I saw size 13 Athen in ABigCivFan’s save :lol: ), no military (“weak” is not the word when you have a one chariot SOD :lol: ), exploration could have been better.

A view of the land:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0300.jpg

And cities:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0295.jpg

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0296.jpg

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0297.jpg

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0298.jpg

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0299.jpg

And finally the espionage screen (“Sury, Pericles is watching you”):

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0302.jpg

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

edit @Jet: you should rename your save ;)

1 AD
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee216/athenai777/CFC/immortal-civver-II-1AD-1.jpg

Seeing the open space, I built the Great Wall right away (Worker/Warrior/GW).

Seeing the nearby land and the many neighbors, I planned for Cultural in Athens, Sparta (1NE of the Wheat) and Thebes, although I guess this save could be used for another victory condition.

The first 2 GPs have been Spies. So far they've been used as scouts. Without the Pyramids and planning for Cultural, I didn't see a good use for settling them.

I built the Statue of Zeus in Sparta for culture and soldiers, and maybe for a later defense benefit.

I settled Corinth for Stone just as Bismark finished the Pyramids (actually one turn afterwards - oops.)

At Aesthetics in 400 BC I made one trade, to Lincoln for IW + Poly, and started Literature. More trades are available now. I wouldn't mind the GPP pollution from the Great Library if we got it. Right now I'm running some temporary scientists in order to rush to Literature.
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee216/athenai777/CFC/immortal-civver-II-1AD-2.jpg

I settled Knossos for Iron, mainly for the purpose of having a go at the barb cities, and to secure Bananas and Sugar. The closer Iron spot would have been OK with grass farms, but I wasn't sure when Catherine would get to the jungle and take the Bananas and Sugar for herself.

Diplomatically, Confucianism and Christianity have been founded, and the Apostolic Palace is Jewish.

units - 6 Archers, 1 Chariot, 1 Warrior, 7 Workers, 2 Great Spies
forest chops - none yet; haven't needed them and was considering National Park in Thebes
Athens - Granary/Monument/Library/GW
Sparta - Granary/Barracks/Walls/Library/SOZ
Corinth - Granary/Monument/Library
Thebes - Monument

I've also done my round. I'll post the details later tonight by editing this post.

Ok - finally found some time to write up my report.

Here goes:


Tech path: Agr > Mining > Wheel > Pott > AH > Arch > Writing > BW > Alpha > (IW) > (Sail) > (Myst) > (Poly) > (Mas) > Math > (Med) > (Mono) > Const > (Priest)

Started building a worker and exploring to the NE with my scout and then looping around in a circle anticlockwise around my start location.

Got to pop 2, switched to build worker

3160 - met Bismark (who has founded Buddhism), worker ready next turn
3120 - Met Sury and Lincoln
3000 - Pop 3, 1 turn to warrior and then build 2nd worker
2720 - Got Pottery started some cottages
2440 - Darius, 1 turn to AH
2000 - 1st Settler built
1920 - Sparta founded
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1400BC2Cities.jpg

1520 - BW, switch to Slavery
1400 -
1040 - Corinth founded
950 - Met Cathy, founder of Hinduism
825 - Alphabet, started trading with Linc first of all
775 - About to found Thebes
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/775BC4thCityPlan.jpg
525 - Pyramids and Collossus built far away, Confucianism founded
475 - Met Wango
425 - Argos founded
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/425BC5Cities.jpg
325 - Great Scientist (academy in Athens)
225 - Bis sends missionary, Budd spread in Athens, I convert.
50 - Construction
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADMyLittleEmpire.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADAthens.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADCorinth.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADSparta.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADThebes.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADArgos.jpg

Early Strategy
I went for horses quickly because I anticipated big trouble with Barbs and Chariots are most handy for protecting your terrain improvements, workers and cities. Sure enough I had swarms of Barbs and the Chariots were really handy.

Next city was going to be my GP farm. 3rd city I went for the rice and stone for wonders. Also wanted a coastal city so I could get a galley out. Might have done this differently if I had seen that fish there before I built!

5 city was for 2nd ivory and just a good spot. There is a barb city to the north (Avar) which I may conquer and keep. 6th city will be for Iron in NW as sadly Sury pinched the good iron spot I wanted in the East.

Planned spot for next city:
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADNextCitySpot.jpg

GOOD
5 cities all but 1 in very good spots with a 6th on it's way.
Pretty confident I will get hanging gardens, and reasonable chance for theology first (Apost Palace?? hmm).

OK
Economy is ok, can run at 50% but need to boost higher.
Tech position is decent too.

BAD
Sury grabed an important spot that I wanted. Could have managed barbs better as that ended up slowing me down more than it should have.
Not running enough specialists, only 1 GP so far.

Relative positions:
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADRelations.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADTechTrade.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/1ADDemog.jpg

Please add me to the list of players and of folks posting the details this evening.

Edit: updated with my report


It seems that just about everyone else settled in place. I chose instead to put the capital on the Ivory. While arguably not as strong in the long term, IMO it has been a better choice through this timeframe. It turned a mediocre tile into a good one, left the flood plain for other use, gave an additional hammer to the capital and immediately allowed it to grow to size six. I am also of the opinion that three good cities are better than one great one although, given the Bureaucracy bonus, that certainly is up for argument.

I trained two workers (at sizes 1 and 3) and three warriors while Athens grew up. My first worker farmed the corn and an FP then built a road. At this point, Pots came in and the second worker was trained. Together they cottaged three FPs. Then one went west to pasture the cows while the other built a fourth cottage over the previously-farmed FP. So the capital settled into a routine of working the corn, cow and the FPs, producing absolutely nothing but workers and settlers with the exception of a one-turn chopped Library. Towards the end, it also worked on a Granary as additional LUXes came on board allowing further growth.

Research order went Agri-TW-Pottery-AH. I took AH mainly in order to work the cattle tile but luckily it also revealed Horses in a useful location so Sparta was built on the desert tile south of the ponies. I continued research with Mining and BW, which was discovered the turn Sparta was founded so I quickly chopped out a barracks and some chariots for barb defense. Next came Corinth in the location where most folks placed Sparta. We revolted to slavery while the settler was on the way to the city site. Research continued with Writing and IW. Corinth chopped/whipped a library and hired some scientists. After a while it helped with the military and worker production.

Here's a picture of Athens as it starts its first settler. At this point, one worker was cottaging the farmed FP and the other was pasturing the cattle. Both then went south to bring the horses on line. Athens next trained a worker to farm the wheat followed by a settler to found Corinth. Note that a warrior is partially trained. I switched to the settler here because the capital, relatively speaking, is in a growth phase. I actually trained the warrior first but only after the cottage and pasture were done. At this point, the capital would have two additional hammers but the same food surplus. This difference meant that the warrior could be finished without either working a weak tile or growing to size seven. It's a small point but the details add up.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIIAthensSettler.jpg

IW revealed several sources of ore in the neighborhood, the most convenient being just to the west so Thebes was founded there. It got Athens' cows in order to get some growth capacity. The capital got more cottages in exchange. Thebes, Corinth and Sparta shared duties training military while hiring scientists to speed research and GP production. Corinth pretty much always had two scientists while the other two cities varied depending on need. By the turn of the years, I got three GSs, two from Corinth and one from Sparta. The first was used to build an academy in Athens. The others I saved for bulbing. Here Athens gets its Academy in 675BC.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIIAcademy.jpg

In the meantime, Athens continued to build cities. First came one on the north coast to block Sury and claim the silver. Two cities to the east claimed the rest of the flood plains. Just before the turn of the years, I founded my eighth to the northeast for the sheep and the furs. Because of the foreign trade routes, new cities are still profitable as soon as they are founded.

Meanwhile, research continued with Aesthetics, Sailing, Math. Here Abe just discovered Alphabet. I took Mysticism off the table and accepted the deal. The shot says I was researching Calendar but I switched immediately to Mysticism in order to trade for techs up the religious line.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIITechTrade.jpg

I also traded for Poly, Mono and Monarchy. Everything else was self-researched. I went on to Calendar, Currency, CoL and Mediation. On the last turn I bulbed Philo and founded Taoism so I am far ahead in the Liberalism race.

Courthouses are going up everywhere. Two could be whipped this turn - and probably should be. I have just started CS. No beakers are invested yet though. Perhaps Construction would be better for a Sury-smackdown and some Odeons? I'm still undecided about this. It would be nice to get to CS and revolt to Bureaucracy and HR when it comes in. OTOH, while REX is definitely in the cards either way, my three prod cities could easily put the hammer to Sury while the capital continues to build settlers for growth to the south and west.

Throughout most of the game Sury was the worst enemy of two AIs (Lincoln and Cathy, I think) so I didn't open borders with him until very recently. Consequently I don't know much about what lies to the east. My exploration of the south and west, although far from finished, is in much better shape.

Some 1AD shots...

First, the capital. We already have towns on all the FPs and the grasslands are maturing nicely.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIIAthens1AD.jpg

Then there's Knossos, the Taoist Holy City. Only 400 years old and already well-developed. This would be good Shrineland if I could somehow produce a GP and some missionaries.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIITaoist.jpg

Military. Pretty good for units. I lost a warrior, a chariot and the scout to the barbs. Slightly deficient in workers. Given the amount of whipping coming up, it's not too bad.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIIMilitary.jpg

Maps. First the north.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIINorth.jpg

Then the south. Lots of good city locations still available.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIISouth.jpg

Relations. The top civs are pleased, the bottom cautious. At some point in the near future we will likely have to choose between the Jewish and Buddhist blocks. But not yet.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIIRelations.jpg

Demographics. In the top half in most of the important categories. Second in land. Third in GDP.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIIDemographics.jpg

Techs. Situation is pretty good. I have been running binary science throughout of the game but the sustainable rate is roughly 80 BPT. The new courthouses should help.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ICIITechs.jpg

Cities. In a builder phase, as I have been from the beginning. Courthouses going up everywhere

Dang! Wrong pic. I'll fix this later.

Man, I need to read all your reports carefully, 'cause in mine I got into economic troubles and I'm way behind where I should have been in techs. Plus, I had to play one more turn because I didn't want to leave you not knowing the outcome of an interesting "event"... This Immortal business is really hard...

By the way, just a reminder: the round should end "tomorrow" night but since we're probably having players from all over the world, I'll declare it ended on Friday morning at around 8AM GMT. Once it is over you can still post saves as "shadows" (of same length as round 1) but they cannot receive votes. Also, only players who will have submitted a save for round one by the deadline will be included in the final roster for this game.

Been busy IRL.

Playing my save now.

Heres my effort


Settled 2 SE to gain more forest and less FP, wanted to have a few cities overlapping with cap. First game on Immortal, so i went
Arch,Ag,Min,Wheel,Pot,Wri,AH,BW
built worker, warrior,arch,settler.

Had huge barb problems, lost a few archers, hence a slower REX, lost the iron to Sury. Had a settler dirverted to claim it on the turn i discovered IW, too late by 2 turns.
http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/IMMPrec-0010000.jpg

REX'd and took the Northern iron, south on clams and stone,on the horse and had a settler heading for the pigs and 2 units to take a SW barb city.

Sury DOW. just about to assign scientists all round to make the research. Changed to phlanax and garrisoning, 4 Phl heading to visit sury iron city.

To be honest i did better than i expected, but due to early barbs and Sury it could have worked out alot better.
http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/IMM2-0020000.jpg

World view

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/IMM2-003-world0000.jpg

193541

Welcome to the Forums Araneya. :beer:

I'd like to withdraw my game from the voting as I unfortunately can't guarantee that I'll be able to complete each round. I consider this game won anyhow in several of the saves. :)

Understood. Hope to see you around. :) I've just finished my report and I must say, in my save it's also won... for the AI. :lol:

Round I report:

Settling in place. Techs: Agri->AH, while building Scout -> Worker -> Settler.

Lincoln comes from the east. Far east probably.

Found horses, so I'm gonna put some wheels on them.

Bismark is the founder of Buddhism.

Khmer to the east, probably closer than Lincoln. Unless Link circled from somewhere to get to me.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img01.jpg

Mining -> BW next. My scout meets a barb archer to the east. Great, I was going to get my settler there first to block Sury. Switching to southern horses. But my scout actually wins! Change of plans, roading east.

Meet Cathy and found Sparta:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img02.jpg

My super scout survives a battle with a Warrior (mine has Woodsman II and is on a jungle tile). It has 8XP now, if only I could get it to 10... Ok, if he makes it out of this alive, I'm giving him a name!

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img03.jpg

No dice... Tomb of the unknown Scout it is.

Pottery -> Writing.

Corrinth founded.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img04.jpg

GS in the capital, settled for Academy.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img05.jpg

Converting to Buddhism. The lesser evil with Sury near me... And maybe I'll get some Buddhist loving and free techs...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img06.jpg

No techs, but get copper for horses from Bismark.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img07.jpg

Not looking good...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img08.jpg

And sure enough, Sury declares war on me... Let's see, chariots versus Swords...

Two more turns. How fitting that I'm facing the stack'o'doom...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img09.jpg

At least Sury only has 7 units to my 9, so I won't lose the city on the first turn. Plus I'll get rid of some of my money issues when my troops die! Great hopes! :P

Four defeats and three victories! I'm alive! Yes!

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img10.jpg

What to do... I have two chariots with Flanking 1 and about 16% retreating chances, but I'll have a Phalanx coming out through slavery. I decide to wait in the city.

And Sury retreats! Yes, yes, yes!

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img11.jpg

Ok, not out of the woods yet, so I'll play another turn to see if I lose Sparta (in which case it is pretty much game over...)

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img12.jpg

THIS IS SPARTA! Sury's pissing his pants.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img13.jpg

The end. And yet, not.

State of the world: I have 6 cities, a terrible tech rate (which can be improved by swtiching some tiles around to get math in under 10 turns) since I've had to fend off a lot of barb action and I've recently switched to production again to get those Phalanx out. I'm also last in pretty much everything except land, and I'm at war with Sury.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img18.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img14.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img15.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img16.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/IMCII_RI_img17.jpg

Let's see if anyone did worse.

Chomp.

Vista did some auto update thingy, somehow it managed to eat all of my saved game files across the board (including losing an almost won Rome: Total War save I had been working at off and on for about three months, argh!)

Looked at some spoilers, and my round was not as impressive as some of the rounds posted here, so no great loss.

I think the loss of my saved games was the final straw. I don't have as much time and/or energy for Civ at this time (started playing poker again), so I'd like to request a removal from the roster. I will still be following this thread/game and I will try to play the rest of the rounds but I won't promise anything.

As Gliese and Soirana have retreated from this game, this is the final roster for it:

ABigCivFan
Araneya
RRRaskolnikov
Jet
Kaleb
Abegweit
KingMorgan
carl corey

We've got 8 players, which is a decent sized roster, especially for Immortal. :) Voting begins today and ends Sunday night (or earlier if we get all the votes by then).

If I've missed a valid save (1AD) please let me know.

DMOC, do you still want to be included in the roster for future rounds? If yes, I'll make an exception for this round but you should be sure you'll have the time to play the next ones.

Too late to join, but I just played up to 1 AD anyways...

no huts?

What a brutally stong start:eek:

Move warrior on plainshill, find corn, move settler 88 on forest, else too many FPs...
193641

My almost immortal scout had a surpisingly long live, but then a barbarcher ended it... ...still, he revealed quite some map and I have already marked some nice citysites... ...IF I can get them all, the AI will def. have some problems here.
193642

...

Things went pretty smooth... ...forgot to make more screens... ...have 6 cities + 2 settlers + two spots blocked + decent chance on capturing a barbcity (some swords are on the way...)
193644
Have changed cityplacement a bit, due to new info...

...

Getting 10-11 cities up and running with this land actually means "game over" for the AI...

...

Worders:
Zeus, GLib (whipped this round in capital), Academy (in capital), Panth (can be whipped next turn in helpercity)

Army:
Mainly archers, some swords, not impressive, but politics are OK, some 3-5 swords more are planned, since I only stole iron some turns ago...

...

Tech:
193643
Trading along with Dari, not beeing able to trade for Math huts a little...

Strat:
Breed GSs in Capital +1 helpercity, else cottage everything and sprint to lib


Having read now the othe spoilers, I know now my report isnt detailed enough, here comes some more (I also seem to have expanded into the opposit direction then the rest, leaving me with no horses and no bronze:lol:)

Research:
Agri, Wheel, Pot, Mining, Archery, AH, Bronze, Writing, Aest, Myst, Poly, Lib, Priest, CoL, trade for Alpha, Iron, Monarchy.

Early strat:
Getting huts up along the FP river, settle along FP river, settle quick and grab lots of land, run GS in 1 city to get academy, the focus on army (I only have archers), in parallel build lots of settlers (7) and workers (10), get some nice wonders because I delay trading Aest quite some time: Zeus (with Eles, for Power), Pant (GPs) and the GLib (more GPs). Getting these 3 wonders delayed expansion and infra quite a bit, because I had to chop the GLib and the Pant without math...

I have build baracks in all cities I think, to keep power up and havent joined any religion. There is already war among the AIs, but I dont remember the enemies...

No huts, no events (says so in the first post ;) ). The idea was to keep things as uniform as possible between the different players so that we can compare saves more easily.

Agreed about the start being very good. For those of us who don't usually play Immortal though it doesn't hurt to get a good start like this. And the Immortal barbs gave me quite some trouble which set me back a lot. I had much better rounds (until I got DOWed by two AIs at the same time :lol:) in IMCI when I could easily contain the barbs through fogbusting or in EMCI due to having to deal with Emperor barbs instead of their Immortal cousins. :D

You're free to play shadow rounds as long as you put them in spoilers like this one. As are the other people who have said they were going to play but didn't get to post a round 1 save. Hope to see you around for future IMC games as a member of the roster. :)

My Votes:

1. Kaleb 3pts. Good city placements, good city specialization, good overall development and potential.

2. Abegweit 2pts. Good science rate, good overall development, but the big downside is the capital, after moving to this location you gained 6 not so useful plain tiles hence dramatically reduced the potential for a super Beauracracy capital, this capital will grow a lot slower than others and produce much less science than capitals submitted in the other games.

3. Jet 1pt. Good city placements, good potential but slightly underdevelopped.

Hi people,

I quit home for 4 days and I don't have time for votes... :( I don't want to do that in a hurry... (it woudn't be fair with all those good saves)
I will try to find more time for the next round... again sorry about that

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

Well, hopefully we'll have enough votes for this round for a good candidate to emerge for the next one. :) See you for the next round.

Too late to join, but I just played up to 1 AD anyways...Snaaty, I can't download your game. When I try, I get Jet's instead. I think that this is because you both have uploaded games with the same name. Could you rename it to something else? I'd really like to see it. :D

Snaaty, I can't download your game. When I try, I get Jet's instead. I think that this is because you both have uploaded games with the same name. Could you rename it to something else? I'd really like to see it. :D

Just rename it when you download. ;)

Just rename it when you download. ;)Doesn't work. It shouldn't be a problem anyway since Firefox will create a second file with (2) in the name while IE overwrites the previous one. I tried deleting the other game. Doesn't work either. :confused: I even tried clearing the cache.

One strange fact is that after I download it, the number of views doesn't change on either Snaaty's file or Jet's file.

If you can access it, can you upload a copy for me? Thanks.

Doesn't work. It shouldn't be a problem anyway since Firefox will create a second file with (2) in the name while IE overwrites the previous one. I tried deleting the other game. Doesn't work either. :confused: I even tried clearing the cache.

One strange fact is that after I download it, the number of views doesn't change on either Snaaty's file or Jet's file.

If you can access it, can you upload a copy for me? Thanks.

Do you get to choose where to put the file as you download? Perhaps you somehow get an automatic download to a certain folder where it overwrites by default? No idea never had that issue, should be something you can change in settings in that case.
I checked the links and they are definitely not the same. The only other explanation I can give that makes sense with what you're saying is that Snaaty accidentally clicked on Jet's save when he uploaded.

Do you get to choose where to put the file as you download? Perhaps you somehow get an automatic download to a certain folder where it overwrites by default? No idea never had that issue, should be something you can change in settings in that case.Firefox has a mode in which you automatically download to a certain folder but it doesn't overwrite. As I said earlier, it changes the file name to put a (2) in it. You are right. It is indeed possible to change the settings. Same result either way. I also tried downloading from a different computer, one that doesn't even have civ on it. Still the same result.

I checked the links and they are definitely not the same.I have checked them too and I agree. They are not the same. It remains that I get the same file when I download.

The only other explanation I can give that makes sense with what you're saying is that Snaaty accidentally clicked on Jet's save when he uploaded.So you haven't downloaded the file and don't know whether the two are the same? This explanation is possible but I rather doubt that Snaaty has a copy of Jet's save.

I downloaded without problems looked very much like Snaaty file:)
At least maches his screenshots:lol:

Renamed it and uploaded. Hope that helps.

I downloaded without problems looked very much like Snaaty file:)
At least maches his screenshots:lol:

Renamed it and uploaded. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the work, friend, :) but in my computer it's still Jet's file and doesn't match the screenshots. I gotta think the problem has something to do with my Internet provider. Tomorrow I will try another.

My save is just that good.

Araneya, I see your report but I don't see a save included with it. Please try to sumbit it today. I'll send this by PM too.

My votes:

Abegweit - 3 points. Capital not so hot, but overall a great empire, lots of workers, great techs and we're already sitting on a GS for Paper with another one coming. Need to build some military though, maybe tech/trade Construction for War Elephants once Civil Service is in.

RRRaskolnikov - 2 points. Great Spies are quite something... A Spy + War Elephant + Swords war against Sury seems very possible, although we'll need to find the production to get it going.

Kaleb - 1 point. Hmm, what's the plan with Theology? Theocracy and war with War Elephants/Cats? We'll need some techs to keep our economy from crashing. Interesting idea nonetheless.

Might review these when we get Araneya's save.

Here's my save, sorry I forgot it:) The plan is to bulb philosophy with a GS, build Angkor Wat in the Capitol and hire tons of priest and settle all of the GP in Athens, which will together with the shrine, Wall Street and Bureucracy create a crazy capitol.

My votes:

ABigCivFan 3 points- Powerful cities, good techrate. If I hadn't decided to try my weird strategy, then this would probably be my choice, with early monarchy.

Snaaty/Abegweit 2 points- I'm not sure can we vote for Snaaty? Otherwise I vote for Abegweit as I like the idea that you moved the capitol, shareing the fp and opening up other possibilities than bureucracy boosted capitol.

Kaleb 1 point- A really solid game.

DMOC, do you still want to be included in the roster for future rounds? If yes, I'll make an exception for this round but you should be sure you'll have the time to play the next ones.


No I do not want to be included. My CIV playing time is very limited. I will still be hanging around here, of course.

I put the following together (guess I have too much time on my hands :lol: ). I originally had Gliese in the chart too but decided that it wouldn't be right to upload it as he has withdrawn. In evaluating the various games, I have to say that the in-game score seems to pretty accurately reflect the progress of the players. Gliese's score reflects where I would place his game as well.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/ComparisonChart.jpg

Undoubtedly (if I could only load his game :mad:) I would find that Snaaty would be on top of the heap... He's one of the very best players in the game after all. I am pleased to find that I followed the same general plan as he did, even if (inevitably) I didn't execute it as well.

More importantly I learned something from his game. As he said, "Move warrior on plainshill, find corn, move settler 88 on forest, else too many FPs..." While I understood the issue about the FPs, I sent my scout southeast. I realise now that I had subconsciously decided where to place the capital before moving him. :blush: I can't shake the feeling that every other player in this game made the same mistake. Snaaty's capital location is clearly the best, yet he was the only one to find it. Says something about the difference between the top players and us mere mortals. :nuke:

Since the rules forbid me from voting for him, here are my choices:

ABigCivFan 3 points

The single-minded obsession with Bureaucracy and the capital simply does not fit this map with its huge amount of beautiful land and numerous excellent cities sites. This has led to many empire-wide defects. These include a sub-optimal research path, the weakest military of any game and poor expansion. Not to mention a cesspool of unhealth in Athens itself.

On the bright side, while the goal was wrong, it has been pursued quite competently. Size 13 :goodjob: Tech rate is decent and, as he points out, will be significantly improved once he gets to CS. The military situation will change rapidly as Sparta churns out units. Good city placement and poised well to expand when he finally gets around to it.

Question: where are the GPs? Aren't we Philosophical? :scan: Something else sacrificed for capital development?

I found it close between 2nd and 3rd and eventually decided it this way. The tie breaker was city placement. You can recover from a lot of bad choices but this game doesn't forgive that particular mistake.

RRRaskolnikov 2 points

Good city placement. Decent GNP. Good teching. The Great Wall is always useful.

Worst problem is poor city development. Stalling Athens' growth at size 3? :eek: While I think that it should be cottaged, there certainly is nothing wrong with running an SE. However no matter which way you go the city should be far larger. There are a ton of developed tiles in the BFC which are going to waste.

Also, to oversimplify a little, there are four ways to run an economy. Three work. These are: 1) cottage everything, 2) run specialists everywhere and 3) cottage the capital while running specialists elsewhere. Unfortunately, we have made the fourth choice here.

Kaleb 1 point

Well-developed capital. Already has an academy and some towns. Consequently, GNP is decent. Badly needs an Odeon however and should be working on it. This is especially true since Sparta will build the HG in a mere seven turns. When that happens, Athens will be over the happy cap.

This brings me to a more general point about this game, which is that I have to disagree with a lot of the choices made. They seem aimless. Walls? Galleys? Missionaries? Why? We should be training soldiers to take out Avar. Worst of all is the placement of Thebes, which loses the fish.:(

A mild reproach to all three players: shouldn't you have found the northern fish by now? :p

It's too late to get my round into voting, but here it is anyway. I seriously think this is the EASIEST Immortal game ever.

To 1 AD


I played 15 extra turns from the 100 I played previously.

GS #2 came and I sent him to build a second academy (first is in Athens).

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0008-3.jpg

I also took advantage of a weird barbarian activity and captured this city with 2 chariots. The 2 workers included were also great. :goodjob:

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0009-3.jpg

With all the expansion I was doing, my research might have been hurt a bit -- therefore, I tried to find a solution with this wonder, which can 1) generate some great scientists for me, 2) generate research points, and 3) culturally press Sury and protect Corinth..

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0010-3.jpg

By 1 AD:

Tech

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0011-3.jpg

Land with 7 cities.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0012-3.jpg

Now, I COULD found an eighth here...

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0013-3.jpg

Actually, I should have founded this city many turns earlier. I was planning on founding it in the middle of the jungle 10 turns ago to get the iron, until I realized that I had sailing so founding the city on the coast was the way to go. I should have done it sooner.


City #9 for me will go here once the settler in Thebes is completed.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0014-3.jpg

The capital, doing well reseasrch-wise.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0015-3.jpg

Corinth, which will generate a third Great Scientist for me. I don't know whether I want an academy or a lightbulb.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj197/DMOC_album/Civ4ScreenShot0016-3.jpg


Overall, game is strong. Nice land, a good city (Corinth) to get Great Scientists, my opponents have a very slow tech rate, Sury, my only real neighbor, is the same religion as me and at war with Lincoln, so that border is safe. The diplomatic situation is also nice as I am part of the Hindu block, whereas the only Buddhists are Bismarck and a weak Lincoln.

Also, my worker up in the northern lands is almost done with a fur camp, which will allow my cities to get +1 population room. I am preparing for a population boom soon once my expansion is close to finishing up. My 9 workers will also help in this case.


See? Seriously, I think it would be hard to LOSE....I agree with Snatty that getting 10-11 cities is GAME OVER for the AI's. Sury won't hurt me since he's after Lincoln, Bismarck won't because he can't get to my land due to no open borders with Sury, Catherine won't threaten me because she shares a HUGE border with both Wang and Darius.

ABigCivFan 3 points

The single-minded obsession with Bureaucracy and the capital simply does not fit this map with its huge amount of beautiful land and numerous excellent cities sites. This has led to many empire-wide defects. These include a sub-optimal research path, the weakest military of any game and poor expansion. Not to mention a cesspool of unhealth in Athens itself.

On the bright side, while the goal was wrong, it has been pursued quite competently. Size 13 :goodjob: Tech rate is decent and, as he points out, will be significantly improved once he gets to CS. The military situation will change rapidly as Sparta churns out units. Good city placement and poised well to expand when he finally gets around to it.

Question: where are the GPs? Aren't we Philosophical? :scan: Something else sacrificed for capital development?



The reason for "single minded obsession of Bureaucracy" in this particular game is because the capital site and synergy.

It can grow fast and work 16 cottages. when you put in

Academy+oxford+science inprovments+Bureaucracy, this city will generate more beakers than 10 other cities combined for most of the game.

This again is the reason that you do not want to "share" the flood plains with other cities since the other cities do not get Academy and Oxford (+150% beakers)

Anyone interested can run some simple math on this and you will see the potential in these numbers.

Health is no issue, rice and fish are being hooked up, as long as this city grows fast enough to work all the cottagable tiles, health is 0 of concern.

Larger and more powerful cities can produce anything faster: settler/workers/military.

I did plan to work 2 scientists in any one of cities to get 1 more GS to bulb Education, the rest can be researched very fast anyway after Bureaucracy comes in.

Currency/Calender can be traded within a few turns.

I do not think this game is a "win" yet at this point, we have other fast expanding AIs in the game who can still be of challenge.

Since the topic of capital placement has been a considerable controversy on this thread, here is an interesting question which might shed some light on why Snaaty said that a city can have too many flood plains.

My Athens has 18 cottageable tiles while ABCF's only has 15 (well, 19 and 18 respectively if you cottage resources). Assuming enough health and happiness, both capitals can easily support all those cottages.

So here's the question. Given that I have a surplus of 11 food and 5 health while he has a surplus of 7 food and a deficit of 6 health, how long will it be before my city is cottaging more tiles than his?

Bonus question for extra points. My capital is using 4 FPs while the start location uses 11. What do you think will happen to the other seven tiles? I'm sure you know but the answer can be found in my screen-shot of Knossos. :mischief: That happens to be a Holy City and can also support 18 cottages. I think I have decided what to do with the GS dozing in my capital. :lol:

I do not think this game is a "win" yet at this point, we have other fast expanding AIs in the game who can still be of challenge.Dude, this game is indeed won, both in your game and mine. Not to mention Snaaty's and Gliese's. I'm already second in score and rising rapidly. Several of the other games are very playable as well. The start is simply too good. Doesn't feel like Immortal at all.

Furthermore, I think I've made an excellent case that my capital is actually better suited to bureaucracy than yours. In any case, the main difference between the two is that I have only started growing mine while you have devoted the entire game to it.

Agree with Abegweit. I don't see how any AI can pose a threat. The only AI's who NORMALLY would pose a threat will typically target others in this game.

Hey, don't discount our ability to lose from a powerful position! ;)

:lol:

I can see one way to do it. ABCF is so weak militarily that a DOW by Sury would be very hard to handle. The window of opportunity is narrow, however, and I doubt that Sury will take advantage.

Well Sury will likely be targeting a certain leader to his southwest.... (due to base peaceweight differences)

Lincoln

And compared to the immortal level AI's, I never am with them militarily until the Renaissance since I have much more important things to build early on than costly units. :(

:lol:

I can see one way to do it. ABCF is so weak militarily that a DOW by Sury would be very hard to handle. The window of opportunity is narrow, however, and I doubt that Sury will take advantage.

Talk about serious shortsightness and lack of understanding of the game. take out my save.

Guys, please stop bickering here, it's only a game.

Agree with Abegweit. I don't see how any AI can pose a threat. The only AI's who NORMALLY would pose a threat will typically target others in this game.Just noticed that you posted your 1AD save. Yet another won game. :goodjob:

Talk about serious shortsightness and lack of understanding of the game.Not true. Rather it was simply a little dig which was thoughtless, unnecessary and uncalled for. Sorry. Please accept my apologies.

We've got 4 votes so far, with RRRaskolnikov saying he won't vote since he's not close to a Civ computer to open the saves. That leaves 3 people to vote on Sunday. We've got quite a race so far, so please make your preferences known. Every vote counts! :D

Araneya, Snaaty's save isn't included in the vote, so I noted your other submission for 2nd place.

Well Sury will likely be targeting a certain leader to his southwest.... (due to base peaceweight differences)

LincolnI totally agree (and I said it earlier). I do not believe that ABCF will get dow'd. I did say that, among the best saves, the only route to failure is an out-of-blue DOW on a weak civ. I also said that his is the weakest. I stand by both assertions.

There are also the other saves.

Out of all of us only CarlCorey was unlucky enough to get a DOW. Despite this, he was - and still is - stronger than ABCF. While he is clearly in last place, except for the tiny size of all his cities and the war against a stronger neighbour, his game actually has good potential.

I would like to try and turn around this decent attempt against bad luck around instead of simply trotting some other game out to victory. So if it's allowed, I would like to change my vote. CC: 3. Other: 0.

Edit: whatever the result of the vote, I will be playing this game. It is down in the hole but has a lot of positives.

I think I'll still go with the best save here. It's only the second time I play Immortal and I'm sure that there are still things to learn even from a "won game" save. :) If anyone wants to play from another save they are of course free to do it, but it will be a shadow game.

There is a disadvantage in our position, between the two religious blocks. That, together with AIs calling us to go to war with them will probably create some interesting situations.

Indeed. I took some diplomatic hits in my game as before a religion spread to me so that I could choose a camp both camps made demands to stop trading with someone from the other religion. That didn't endear me to Sury, so part of his intention to declare war must have come from there.

Thanks for the feedback on my game Abegweit. I think I did my game in a bit of a hurry very late at night, been a really awful week IRL :(

Glad I came out as well as I did considering I let Sury get that Iron (bah, he built it before he had IW, lucky git) so no Phalanxes for me yet. I also could have handled the barbs better and that seriously slowed some of my dev.

Corey - I was thinking of trying to found Christianity and pursuading Sury to switch to it and then switching back before DoW on him. For some reason I just feel like fighting someone and taking on the hindu block may be too big a bite to chew.

My votes:
Abegweit - 3pts
Overall, just a much better developed empire than mine or any others. Only slight negatives (which I'm sure can easily be rectified with all those cities and workers) is production and military a bit lacking. Also a much better exploration of the map.

ABigCivFan - 2pts
Different type of game here, I would be interested to see how this might end up, aiming for a cultural win??

Jet - 1pt
I like Jet and RRRs game as they've manged to get the GW so no barb issues. But both seem a bit lacking on tech, I wonder what the catch up plan is? I'm giving the last point to Jet though, although it's very marginal. Mainly because Athens is better developed.

ABigCivFan 3 points
Abegweit 2 points
Kaleb 1 point

Same votes as KingMorgan (ABC, Abegweit, Kaleb)

All the votes are in... and we have a tie! :D 14 points for ABigCivFan and 14 points for Abegweit with the next save at 8 points.

I'm not a fan of inventing voting rules that we didn't agree upon at the start, but what can I do? I'll give you two alternatives:
1. We wait for RRRaskolnikov to come back and vote to break the tie. That will happen on Tuesday at the earliest.
2. Both saves are declared winners. Each of us plays from the save he rated higher between these two. Which, ironically, makes ABigCivFan play from Abegweit's save, and Abegweit from ABigCivFan's save. :) (RRRaskolnikov gets to choose from which one of the two he plays.)

I would prefer Abegweit's save because he has more land and techs at the moment (there are other reasons, too, don't have time to list here), but really, both are great. And I'm not really supposed to be part of this I'm just a lurker.

All the votes are in... and we have a tie! :D 14 points for ABigCivFan and 14 points for Abegweit with the next save at 8 points.

I'm not a fan of inventing voting rules that we didn't agree upon at the start, but what can I do? I'll give you two alternatives:
1. We wait for RRRaskolnikov to come back and vote to break the tie. That will happen on Tuesday at the earliest.
2. Both saves are declared winners. Each of us plays from the save he rated higher between these two. Which, ironically, makes ABigCivFan play from Abegweit's save, and Abegweit from ABigCivFan's save. :) (RRRaskolnikov gets to choose from which one of the two he plays.)I think it would be instructive to play both saves. The approaches were very different and it would be good to see how they play out.

However I would think that it would be more than a little strange to force ABCF and I to play from each others' saves. I far prefer my own and he clearly preferred his. Surely we should be allowed to play the save we preferred instead of the one we were forced to vote for according to the rules. Note that if we were allowed to vote for ourselves, the result would still be a tie. I would have given him two points and he presumably would have given me one.

It's a good challenge actually. Let him play his and let me play mine. We'll see what happens at the next junction. I'm on for it. :cool: It would be fun. I still want to play your save too, Carl. It's hard but I don't think it's a lost cause.

It will be more fun if we have 2 saves that people can elect to play from here. Abeg is thinking about developing his capital more and I was thinking about grabbing more land now so lets check in at 600AD and see how things develop from both saves.

I will play out my save until 600AD and post spoiler report in a short while.

Let's play from the 2 saves this round and vote on all the resulting saves next round.

Playing from two saves might get a bit repetitive and I'm not sure everyone will have the time... However, I can see playing from the save you voted for as better among the two, with the exception that Abegweit and ABigCivFan play from their own if they want to, and RRRaskolnikov chooses from which he wants to play. If anyone is really interested in playing from both saves, I'm ok with that. Just mention in the end from which save you started for each of your games so that we could have a more meaningful comparison.

Round 2 starts today, Monday, November 10, and ends on Sunday, November 16. We're playing up to 600AD. Good luck to all.

Saves for round 2 can be found grouped here: round 2 start (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297415#2).

Not both saves, silly. One or the other.

Let's play from the 2 saves

Not both saves, silly. One or the other.

I agree. :p

I'm not going to have time to play from both :(

I would say as a tie-breaker to go for the save that got the most 1st place votes.

Aaaaaaargh! It seems I'm not being clear. Everyone plays from the save he thought was better between the two. I thought Jet was saying he wanted to play from both so I gave him the option, but it turns out that's not what he wants.

Anyway, look at post 2 in this thread, we have links for the two saves and a list saying which save you'll play for.

I'm disinclined to go for a tiebreak system as I can easily come up with a few that could make either Abegweit's or ABigCivFan's save be chosen.

Re-posted from post#2 in this thread:

Links to the winning saves & reports for round 1:
- ABigCivFan: 4000BC-1480BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297415#19) and 1480BC-1AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297415&page=2#29), save at 1AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193234&d=1225661457)

- Abegweit: 4000BC-1AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297415&page=2#37), save at 1AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193555&d=1225993172)

For round 2:

- ABigCivFan, Araneya, KingMorgan and Jet play from ABigCivFan's save
- carl corey, Abegweit and Kaleb play from Abegweit's save
- RRRaskolnikov plays from whichever of these two that he chooses

If anyone wants to play from the other save in addition, please indicate in your reports from which saves you started each time.

1AD - 600AD



225AD: Switched to Buea+OR. Research increased by about 50%.
1 settler enroute to settle the Pig+Corn city on a desert hill. I plan to settle only hill cities near Cathy for defensive purposes. She is alway dangerous even if she is pleased.

Thebes becomes another production city, now I am producing more settlers. Given the high commerce in capital, i could easily afford more cities without slowing down research too much.

http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/3/11/10/f_225ADCSCurim_bd95c61.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_225ADCSCurim_bd95c61.jpg&srv=img26)

250AD: Capital

http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/3/11/10/f_250ADcapitam_8ec1735.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_250ADcapitam_8ec1735.jpg&srv=img03)

450AD: Settling 9th city.

http://img29.picoodle.com/img/img29/3/11/10/f_450ADbuildim_6d56d0a.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_450ADbuildim_6d56d0a.jpg&srv=img29)

450AD: 2nd GS bulbing Education. I dont really need any more GS for a while, now happy caps are high and citizens are working all improved land to grow population. Later I prob will start running scientists again when NE are built somewhere. My research is very high and i will not need to rely on bulbing much.

http://img29.picoodle.com/img/img29/3/11/10/f_450AD2ndGSbm_8605f47.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_450AD2ndGSbm_8605f47.jpg&srv=img29)

580AD: 1 Archer hit level 4 unlocking HE. He was hanging around a barb city, the barb archers got weakened by German and Khmer troops and he want in for the kill. A city like Sparta with HE can produce 1 LongBow almost every turn.

http://img37.picoodle.com/img/img37/3/11/10/f_580ADleve4am_922155a.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_580ADleve4am_922155a.jpg&srv=img37)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

600AD: Techs. I have monoply on Paper/Education. 6 turns from Liberalism. I could trade around Paper/Edu for all other important techs (Engineer/Guilds/Feudal/Machinary/campus/Theo and etc). But given a large empire, UOS is acutally very good to have. could take either PP as free tech or do some trading and try sling Astro.

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/11/10/f_600ADtechscm_9aaf755.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_600ADtechscm_9aaf755.jpg&srv=img33)


600AD: Relations. Sury is Friendly, he prob is planning a war against America.
3 Pleased and 2 far away civs causious. No immediate war theat, but Sparta and Thebes will soon begin producing some Longbows for defenses. Also with this kind of tech lead, I could start bribing Sury and Cathy into war preemptively to prevent any chance they DOW me.

http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/3/11/10/f_600ADRelatim_8596ab5.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_600ADRelatim_8596ab5.jpg&srv=img03)


600AD: Sparta. Planned to become the HE city, now having 24 base hammers.

http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/3/11/10/f_600ADSpartam_7f2c4d2.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_600ADSpartam_7f2c4d2.jpg&srv=img26)


600AD: Empire view, 4 more cities planned for settle.

http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/3/11/10/f_600ADempirem_592175d.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_600ADempirem_592175d.jpg&srv=img26)


600AD: Capital. Hitting size 20 in 3 turns. Getting the Oxford in about 15 turns, then, this single city will be able to research Astronomy in about ~7 turns.

http://img32.picoodle.com/img/img32/3/11/10/f_600ADcapitam_0759645.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/10/f_600ADcapitam_0759645.jpg&srv=img32)

Aaaaaaargh! It seems I'm not being clear. Everyone plays from the save he thought was better between the two. I thought Jet was saying he wanted to play from both so I gave him the option, but it turns out that's not what he wants.

Anyway, look at post 2 in this thread, we have links for the two saves and a list saying which save you'll play for.

I'm disinclined to go for a tiebreak system as I can easily come up with a few that could make either Abegweit's or ABigCivFan's save be chosen.

Oops, sorry for getting the wrong end of the stick.

At the end of this round we will still be able to vote for all saves, not just the ones from the 'branch' we have chosen right?

No problem, it was part mock exasperation, since I obviously misunderstood what Jet said too. :)

And yes, we will all vote on all saves, as if everyone was playing the same game. Hopefully we won't have another tie for the next round! :lol:

Hi guys!

Thanks to Abegweit for the summarry of the saves and his enthousiasm (regarding the "already" won game ;))... but I feel totaly capable of trashing the good saves posted :lol:!
I am afraid of the diplomatic situation in particular...
I don't know from which save I will play yet... both are very good (the same can be said from a lot of saves... cool)...
Good luck to those who haven't played yet...

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

Hi :hatsoff: ,

I played from Abegweit's save as it seemed less people would play from it and both saves were very good...

my round to 600 AD:

The round was devoted to expansion and teching...
So I settled 3 cities:
Ephesus to run specialists (6 floodplains)
Halicarnassus also to run specialists (4 food resources)
Rhodes (rice +dye) to block Cathy on the east
I also captured Polynesian (iron, spices, wheat) to block Cathy on the western front.
So that makes a total of 12 cities (2 designed for specialists but still small, 3 for production, and finally 7 for commerce)...

Civics: I switched to HR+Bureau +Caste after CS. No religion adopted as I plan to rule FR after lib and the religious situation is quite messy anyways.

On techs: I grew two scientists, so I was able to bulb paper, part of education and part of liberalism thanks to the one Abegweit had also produced.
I traded for techs like mettalurgy, compass (to clear the bulb path), feodalism and mechanic for military protection (mechanic was trade after the last bulb).
We are currently at 1 turn from Liberalism (we can take PP among the available techs).

I think we can go for a lot of victory conditions from the save, but I would prefer a run to conquest (vassalizing loop)...

Tech situation:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0302-2.jpg

Diplo:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0304-1.jpg

yeah I forgot to say that Surry is after Bismarck!

Overall situation:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0303-1.jpg

Finally, I have said nothing about national wonders because well... you see the point :lol:


Cheers,

Raskolnikov

As instructed i played from BigCivs save. to 600AD

Settled one city 4W of Athens, cottaged up, Another settler heading for the Phlx near corn, SW of Cap. One settler should head NW where the Barb city was just raised, planned for the riverside grassland. 4 Swords heading for the SW barb city on Cathys borders. Traded late for Calender and currency, for Col and Asth. Had to deny Cathy CS, -1 and traded with Lincon -2. Still happish. Impressive Bur capital.

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/world0001.jpg

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/trades0002.jpg

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/Attitudes0000.jpg

500-600ad
Settled another 2 cities, pigs and corn, and one near the ex barb NW city.

Plenty of trades availabe, but there are a few worst enemy considerations, so i've held off for the moment.

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/world600ad0000.jpg




194417

@King Morgan: wrong save... ;)

Nice Game RR.


Question, you were clearly winning the Lib race, why did you need to use 3 GS on bulbing? I was thinking maybe you could use one of them to start a GA to mass build Universities or build another Academy in another high commerce city.



I will be traveling for 2 weeks, and wont be able to play Civ. But here is my report and save for up to 1200AD (I played up to here last week). It is up to you and Carl whether to include this save for voting next week. If not, at least it can be used for strategy comparison.

Report: 600AD-1200AD



700AD: Won lib taking Nationalism for Taj. Sury still Friendly, Cathy pleased. I had sentry near Russian borders looking out for any large stacks. If I see large any large stacks, whip time... All my cities bording Russia are on hill, so I am confident I can hold them with just a few turns of preparation. But I never saw any Russian offensive stacks...

Sury later got busy fighting Persia, So I was able to concentrate on infrus building.

Again Diplomacy is the best weapon to defend myself on these levels.

880AD: Capital after building Oxford. Now pushing for Early Democracy to allow super cottage civics.

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/11/15/f_880ADCapitam_5b77881.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/15/f_880ADCapitam_5b77881.jpg&srv=img33)

1020AD: Got Democracy, Under a Taj GA. Empire View, expanded further to the West.

http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/3/11/15/f_1020ADGotDem_6b50d05.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/15/f_1020ADGotDem_6b50d05.jpg&srv=img26)

1070AD: Silver pop in Capital.

1090AD: This is the super capital approach I was talking about looking at the 4000BC save. It does produce more beakers than 10 other cities combined (renaissance Era) after the right buildings/improvements/civics.

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/11/15/f_1090ADsuperm_0ed4502.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/15/f_1090ADsuperm_0ed4502.jpg&srv=img33)


1110AD: used 3rd GS to start another GA right after the Taj GA to rush research Mil Trad/Rifle and etc. I am planning a lighting Cavary/Spy based invasion against Cathy.

http://img32.picoodle.com/img/img32/3/11/15/f_1110AD3rdGSm_2945c0a.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/15/f_1110AD3rdGSm_2945c0a.jpg&srv=img32)


1200AD: Empire View, running Theo for Cav building, 4 turns to Steam Power and Levee. Have high EP will use on city revolts.

http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/3/11/15/f_1200ADempirm_0c4ebee.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/15/f_1200ADempirm_0c4ebee.jpg&srv=img26)

1200AD: Techs. Planning to use this tech edge to take down Russia. Then it is pretty much game over.

http://img34.picoodle.com/img/img34/3/11/15/f_1200ADTechsm_b54501d.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/15/f_1200ADTechsm_b54501d.jpg&srv=img34)

1200AD: Capital with HE and Oxford. After building the levee in a few turns, the base hammer will be 55; when producing units that is a whopping 151 :hammers: or 1 Artillary every turn without a factory or power.

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/11/15/f_1200ADcapitm_b1cfaa0.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/15/f_1200ADcapitm_b1cfaa0.jpg&srv=img33)

With this high research rate, Assembly line is about 6 turn effort. Now we should be able to do a quick war with Cavs/Spies to take down Cathy.

@King Morgan: wrong save... ;)

Took me 10 minutes to work out what you meant, i nearly played Abers save to give you a choice!

All fixed now. The new save is too 600AD.

@ABigCivFan:

I think we have more options that way, as we can research other techs to open more ambitious sling (Steel of liberalism would be awesome)... but I played quickly so perhaps I missed something (a GA to mass build universities is not something I am used to but could have been nice indeed). See you at the next round ;)

I'm playing from Abegweit's save and my game crashes every time I try to see the log. I've tried loading other saves and there's no problem. Does it happen to anyone else? I'll play like this for now (just set autosave to 1 turn and hope I don't crash it too often).

@Carl: didn't use it while playing... but i tested right now and indeed the game crashs when accessing the log...

Abegweit 600AD


As I sorta said earlier, I decided to use my GS for an academy in the Holy City of Knossos. I then whipped a couple of workers and a settler out of Sparta, Corinth and Thebes to continue REXing while Athens and Knossos were encouraged to grow.

It's my practice to end each turn by going through all my cities and then checking for possible trades. When I did this, I was surprised to discover that Lincoln had more than 400 bucks :eek: One of the benefits of the upper road to CS is the ability to make cash trades. So I gave him CoL for it and turned on the afterburners, reaching CS and a revolt to Bureaucracy and Hereditary Rule in 175 AD.

Research followed with Literature and Music, getting the free GA. He's dozing in Athens. I am planning on a Golden Age when I am ready to build universities and to switch to Caste System (and perhaps Pacifism), which will be in about five turns. I then moved on to Paper and Education. I also traded for a few other techs: Construction, Metal Casting and Feudalism.

Even though two cities were allowed to grow and built nothing but infra, I pursued other goals at the same time. The REX continued apace and I am now up to thirteen cities.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/IC2Cities.jpg

A bold moved placed Rhodes to grab the marble. When that's online I should be a lock for the GL as I still have a monopoly on Literature.

Polynesian was captured from the barbs in a small war and the troops are moving in for an attack on another barb city, Visigoth, in two turns. After that, the boys will be a good deterrent against Cathy in case she gets any ideas. You can see the placement of Rhodes and the troops just north of Visigoth.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/IICWest.jpg

I've been pretty aggressive in city placement so I'm going to have to keep up the military. I am now the equal of Darius in power graph and will soon surpass him. That should keep Cathy from getting any ideas. Seventeen workers. :) The eight units at the bottom of the list are planning to meet a chariot at Visigoth.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/008bec88.jpg

There's room for about six more cities before the REX stops. Two in the south for the fish, two in the mid-west for flood plains and some fillers in the north. REX to twenty cities on immortal. That's scary! When that's over, it is time for the smackdown on the Russkies.

Athens and Knossos have been encouraged to grow as fast as they can, reaching size 16 and 12 respectively. Athens is now producing 187 beakers and Knossos has gone from nowhere to 68. They both have plenty of potential for further growth. See Halicanarsus in the far south? I beat Cathy to that site by one turn. :king:

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/IIC2South.jpg

The sustainable tech rate has more than doubled in the last 600 years to about 175 bpt. In fact I am far ahead of my rivals in GDP, probably the most important demographic, and education will be discovered in 2-3 turns. After that comes the GA. Life is good!

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/73063207.jpg

I have been trading first place in score back and forth with Cathy over the last couple of turns. I expect to hit her with cannons. With monopolies on both Paper and Philo, I am so far ahead in the Liberalism race that it should be possible to take Steel as my free tech. I also have monopolies on Literature and Music with Education soon to come.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/6e99048f.jpg

It would be nice to build The Dao Mao. Not because it's necessary but because I can... Maybe I'll claim the stone to the south and build Ankor Wat to in order to run some priests. OTOH, that's a lot of hammers to throw at a distraction. And you do know how Cathy just loves a big gun. :lol:

@CC and RR

Strange. Doesn't crash for me. Here's a screenie. Could this be a BUG Mod thing? I know they used to have issues with it.

Edit: forum won't let me upload it. I'll make it smaller.

Edit2: now it's there.

I don't have BUG.... so can't help with this...

Abegweit, I use 3.17 + Solver's patch + BUG mod. I assume you're running 3.17 too, so are you using Solver's patch or not?

The problem was exactly that. If a file was saved using BUG, it would crash on a computer that didn't have it. You should get it anyway. It's great!

Abegweit, I use 3.17 + Solver's patch + BUG mod. I assume you're running 3.17 too, so are you using Solver's patch or not?3.17 unpatched. I don't have the latest version of BUG either.

Then Solver's patch might be the problem. I'll keep a save and signal the problem after I finish my round.

The explanation is probably that my version of BUG doesn't know about your version of CIV. It may even be normal because of that consideration. I'll upgrade and re-upload my saves. That should fix it. Unfortunately I'm leaving now for an overnight trip and that won't happen until tomorrow evening PDT at the earliest.

Well, take your time, I'm almost finished with my round. Only 3 crashes and I'm already in 500AD. ;)

Round 2 report:

Whip some courthouses, beg 50 gold from Link, then sell him Mono, beg from Wang and sell Meditation to Sury.
As much as I'd love to get CS I don't want to be greedy. We're a bit behind in power, so I decide to go for Construction and HBR.

Get HBR and Construction.

On the same turn there's a vote for AP between Bismark and Sury. I vote for Sury to improve relations, although at +2 he's still cautious.

Interestingly enough no one has researched Literature yet. I have no marble to speed up the wonders and HE is still locked, so I decide to pass. Heading for CS.

Bismark asks for Philo. Damn... I guess he's far enough, so I decline. This drops him to Cautious. Not good. I decide to sell him Aesthetics for a discount (Priesthood & gold). He'd give me Archery too, but I'm not interested in it; I'm already doubtful whether to include Priesthood in the trade or not...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img1.jpg

CS in, I bulb Paper. No trades in sight except Feudalism from Link or Wang, but I don't want to pay their price. Sell the map around, get some gold in return (could get Archery for it but I decline) and finish mapping the continent. Looks like the only ones with land left to settle are Catherine and us.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img2.jpg

Cathy's been attacking Visigoth from the beginning of the round with no avail. Talk about dumb AI...

Revolt to Bureau and Hereditary Rule and set research for Metal Casting. Only Darius has it and he's not trading it. I can afford to double-bulb Education anyway while I get Maces.

375AD: I press Ctrl+Tab and the game crashes. First time, not bad. :)
400AD: Again. Drat, and here I thought I was getting good at this! :lol:

Sury declares war on me despite being pleased. Grr... Come on, leave me alone! I freaking voted for you!

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img3.jpg

I'm not in any immediate danger, especially with Shock elephants coming out of Thebes and Corinth. Plus Cathy and Bismark have a peace treaty with me (from me begging gold), so there's little chance I'll be backstabbed, at least not from someone who could really attack me. I can get Bismark to go to war with Sury for Metal Casting and Construction though. That's a very steep price, but I decide to do it. I'll get diplo points with him and hopefully we can wipe out Sury together in the future.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img4.jpg

And Sury retreats! Muahaha!

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img5.jpg

Let's see how he does against Shock elephants.

I take Visigoth in the meantime and found Ephesus.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img6.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img7.jpg

Finish Machinery and set research for Engineering. First GS for Education is born.

500AD: Third ctrl+tab crash! Oh well, only 100 more years to go. :D

I pillage Sury's horses, maybe I'll go to his ivory to pillage it too. The pillaging pack is one CI Phalanx and one CI+Shock War Elephant. Try to break that! :lol:

Ask Cathy to adopt HR for Aesthetics. Her favorite civic is HR, so why not get the bonus? She becomes Pleased.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img8.jpg

I keep expecting Cathy to backstab me, but for now she doesn't care for it. Finishing Engineering certainly makes me calmer with the increased movement bonus. Plus, she has only melee units (no Maces), archers and chariots. Not really scary.

Isvarapura falls.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img9.jpg

Great General born in Corinth, which looks like a great HE city. I settle it there and switch it from War Elephants to Trebs, hopefully we can take Angkor Wat soon. Set research to Literature as I've found a suitable place for NE (city to the W, 2 fish, 1 cow, 1 deer and 1 grassland for 14 :food:) and hopefully will start HE in Corinth soon. (no 10XP unit yet, several at 9 and 8)

Last turn: Sury suicides 3 or 4 chariots against two elephants and a phalanx in Argos. I had a pikeman ready to get out next turn, but Sury decides enough is enough. He gives me my HE unit too, how thoughtful of him! :D Unfortunately I lose the crabs to a barb galley. Will have to deal with that one. (hence the trireme in the queue)

I take and keep Polynesian (barb city).

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%202/img10.jpg

I block Angkor Wat's route to the rest of the empire with a War Elephant. Another one is on the way, and with a couple of Trebs we should finish it off.

Sparta is 9 turns away from a GS, then it can switch to full unit production. Alternatively it could build cultural buildings (Christian temple and monastery, monument) to put pressure on Bryansk. It's due to pop its borders in 11 turns anyway (giving us stone).

Visigoth already has Odeon and Monument and will get Library in a couple of turns; same thing should happen in Polynesian. We want to make it as hard as possible for Cathy to get to us if she ever declares war.

Knosos has alternated between Chariots (for growth) and Settlers (Effesus and the one for the NE city). The current Chariot should be sent North to fogbust what's left undiscovered, then Knosos can start on a Market.

Athens can switch to building three temples (has three religions) and run priests to get a Great Prophet for Knosos's shrine. We could also build Angkor Wat once we get the stone hooked up. Oh, there's a GS in Athens too, by the way.

Sury is ready to take peace, but I'm not. :)

Trade scene has Theology and Feudalism out there for us. (and Archery, but that one we can self research in 0.00001 of a turn anyway :) )

Tech is yours to choose.

Enjoy.

Oops, forgot the save.

600 AD, from the ABC save. 1AD Corinth switches courthouse for Barracks and Swordsmen, because I want more expansion.

25 Calendar is up for trade from Catherine. We have Monarchy, Alpha, and COL on her. I switch research to Calendar.

50 Cathy asks stop trading with Lincoln, her worst enemy. I agree. In the IBT she acquired Monarchy and Alphabet in the last IBT, so I give up on that trade and resume CS. I'm waiting for a multi trade for COL.

Thebes has chopped its Courthouse, so I hire scientists. It's an unremarkable food city, but I just want to get the next scientist out.

125 give Cathy demanded Sheep

250 CS, switch to Bureau and Caste. No good food cities yet, but the cities that are available for settling can get some chops. Resume Calendar.

300 start a Settler in Athens. Need to grab a jungle city for resources before Catherine gets everything.

325 Calendar -> Paper. COL + Calendar to Surya for Currency. No twofers are available, but COL is now known by 3 civs.

350 Circassian captured by Wang of all people.
More civs have learned COL, so I sell it to Bismark for his 355.
Thebes stagnates on 3 scientists.

375 Navajo weakened by other civs, taken at surprise zero losses. No luxury to mess around with farming XP unfortunately.

CS+140 up for Vassalage from Darius. CS is known by us and Wang. Deal taken.

Buddhist AP built by Bismark. Biz and Surya up, vote for Surya (closer, diplo, also weaker).

400 Surya is in war prep, but is Friendly. Cathy is not in war prep.

425 Paper -> Education
Wang asks me to stop trading with Surya, yeah right.
Surya asks me adopt OR. I'm willing to do that.
Bismark wins the AP with his and Lincoln's vote.

450 Darius asks me to stop trading with Surya, no.

Trade Cathy Feudalism for Construction+100. Fair and forthright is up to +2, and the total is up to Pleased.

475 Bismark has some tech trades up but is in WFYABTA, d'oh.

500 I have started another Settler in Sparta, but I see that Cathy is going to beat us to the nearby Pigs spot on the river. The settler can still go to the northwest coast food spot.

520 Work on farming XP from Ainu. It has 5 Workers, which is awesome. I surround it with Swordsmen, watching out for AIs.

Trade Feudalism to Surya for 120 + world map, then sell the map around for more maps and change, revealing the whole Pangaea.

540 Education is at 1446/2925, and a Great Scientist in Thebes bulbs the remaining 1479. I recently hired 3 Scientists in Corinth, but since Thebes already has a Courthouse, I keep its 3 Scientists hired until its next pop. Start Gunpowder, seeking Chemistry or Steel from Liberalism.

Settle Mycenae in the heart of the jungle for Sugar and Banana, along with Rice and Iron for the city. It's expensive, but 4 Workers are nearby, and it will have OK production from 2 mines.

560 capture Ainu. The champion only gets up 9 XP. No AIs were next to the city yet, but I was getting nervous, and the 5 Workers are much needed!

580 Market in Athens, yay. Starts University. Athens is a little behind on cottages, though, since I've spread the Workers out to the new cities.

580 Catherine asks for Civil Service. She is the score leader and Pleased. Lincoln is her worst enemy. Also, she is the worst enemy of Surya, who is in war prep. CS is known by us, Wang, and Darius. I refuse. She goes from Pleased to Cautious.

I notice notice that we can trade Silk to Surya for Gold and do so. I Haven't hooked our other Silk up yet. I couldn't really trade for Gold before, since he wanted both Wine and Fish.

600 We run out of money and hit our true research rate, which is around 50%.

Corinth and Thebes have 3 scientists each, with Corinth 2 turns ahead. Knossos is running 1 scientist, growing on flood farms to run more. Sparta is still all production. A Settler is 4SE of the northwest food spot. The gang of Swordsmen is healing in Ainu. With a lot of luck, the champion might score the last XP in the tundra.

Buildings are light. I haven't found time for any AP buildings.

No wars are occurring. Techs:


http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee216/athenai777/CFC/immortal-civver-II-600AD-1.jpg

Land (large): http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee216/athenai777/CFC/immortal-civver-II-600AD-2.jpg

Doh! I'm a mug! Was away at the weekend and delayed travelling back. In my hurry to finish my round I played beyond 600AD (ie 840AD! where some really interesting things happen!) before realising my error.

Luckily I had an autosave at 600AD. I'll get the report done this evening, really sorry for the lateness!

EDIT: OK here are my very belated screenshots!


275AD I decided to use the GS to start a Golden Age as soon as I got CS as I needed to change civics and I could use the GPP bonuses to compensate for my lost GS somewhat. I switched to HR, Bureaucracy, Caste and Pacifism converting to Christianity as Corinth and Athens were Christian. On the last turn of the GA I then switched to Free Religion was enable due to the Shwedagon thingumy which I also got on the same turn as CS.

This is what my empire was like pre-Golden Age. Very appropriately on the turn I was due to start the GA a new source of Gold was found!
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb275ADGoldPre-Gold.jpg

This is how I was after the GA and the Civic changes:
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb275ADGoldenAge.jpg
117 science in Athens and 44 GPP in Corinth, nice.

475AD I go West and build Halicarnassus, with a Ping on where I want to build a city to nab the Marble. I'm planning on warring with Sury not Cathy so I want my city right next to the marble just to keep it comfortable culturally.
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb475ADGoWest.jpg

Here's the overview at 600AD with tech at 100% to make comparison easier:
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb600ADTerritory.jpg

Athens and Corinth at 600AD:
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb600ADAthens.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb600ADCorinth-1.jpg

Here's my Western and Eastern empire, Ephesus founded for Stone, I'll also build my big stone heads there.
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb600ADWesternEmpire-1.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb600ADEastEnd-1.jpg

Here's the tech trade situation at 600AD:
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb600ADTechSituation-1.jpg

Taking a leaf out of Abeg's book here are my demographics:
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q277/Kaleb79/Kaleb600ADDemographics-1.jpg

Well, it looks like Araneya is the only one not to have posted a save. We can start discussing saves now, and if he posts his today we'll include in the discussion. If not, vote on those who are posted.

Is Snaaty participating? he posted a round to 1AD (there is also DMOC)...
I will take a look at the saves tonight after work (hopefully Araneya will have posted by then)...

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

Nope, Snaaty posted after the line-up was complete, and with 8 players I think we have enough saves to see a lot of different developments (including being declared on twice in as many rounds by Sury... :gripe: ). DMOC said he doesn't have the time to participate in this regularly, and Soirana and Gliese have also retreated from the challenge.

By the way, voting takes 3 days, unless all the votes are in before the end of the period. Normal ending time is Thursday morning (Nov. 20th), 8AM GMT.

By the way, voting takes 3 days, unless all the votes are in before the end of the period. Normal ending time is Thursday morning (Nov. 29th), 8AM GMT.

Do you mean Thursday 20th November? That is 3 days time.

Nov 29th is a week next saturday.

Oops, yes. Wrong key there. :D

Thanks for the clarifications Carl... and yeah Surry doesn't seem to like you a lot :lol:

But you are giving him a good lesson from I've seen :goodjob:

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

To be fair I had moved a few of my units from the cities near him to take out the barb cities to the West and I was just starting my military build-up, so I probably looked like an easy target. :D But by now I have a GG and there's one born in Germany too, so I bet that Sury regrets attacking me now!

I'm really sorry but I haven't been able to play this round as I've been really busy in real life. Next round should be OK however.

Understood. That means we should be able to vote on the 7 saves we have. Araneya, feel free to point out strength and weaknesses in the saves, but as the rules go, you don't get a vote unless you post a save. :) Hope to see you again on board for the next round!

Hi everyone,

Again, all saves are very good... too good :nono: how do we make votes now!!!
my votes:

1. ABCFan: lot of potential. HE unlocked, good tech rate (and most of the cities are developping) and barb cities still opened
2. Abegweit: very strong... I woudn't do the Glib gambit this late (and scientists are less important after lib). A GArtist is ready for a GAge... very nice too
3. Jet: good empire and good workforce (same as Abegweit), a steel gambit would be game breaking I think... good job

KM, Kaleb (:goodjob: on the wonders), and Carl's saves were very good too... the game is winnable in all (not like in previous Carl's save :lol: ).
@Carl: I don't know if we can finnish Sury right now but you did a good job containing the first waves and striking back. Still, we lack catapults to finnish the job and I don't see an immortal AI without longbows too long around that time frame.
@KM: I think you lack great specialists to fully exploit the potential of your empire (only one so far if I am not mistaken)

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

I agree, RR. All the saves are strong and it is quite difficult to choose a winner. Your game is excellent too. :goodjob: I haven't done a proper analysis in order to make a decision. I may try that tomorrow morning.

Two points come from this. First, the start was simply too good to qualify as an immortal game. Secondly, this round was much too short relative to the first. This is the main reason why it's hard to choose a clear winner. Maybe next time, the first round should end after 100 turns like DMOC played?

Edit: re: GL in my game. ATM, this wouldn't be a gambit as I still have a monopoly on Lit. If the Marble comes on line before the monopoly is broken, I should be a lock for it. That actually is one of the strongest points about my game. I am absolutely dominant in tech. Four monopolies and about to get a fifth... Your point that the GL is less useful at this stage of the game is certainly valid however.

Ras, nope, I didn't think we'd finish him now either. We can probably capture one, maybe two cities aside from the one we already have. But all this war got us shared military struggle with Bismark and a weakened Sury, and we'll know in the future that we can count on Bismark if Sury gets ideas again.

Plus, Longbows don't scare me. We have Engineering and an MI in Corinth. A couple of Accuracy trebs followed by a couple of CRII ones and the current War Elephants should take care of Angkow Wat. If Longbows don't show up in time we might even be able to skip the CRII trebs altogether.

The only AIs noticeably stronger than us are Sury (fighting two wars at once) and Bismark (who's on our side). We're closing in on Darius and Cathy (slightly less than 1:1) and we're not far from Wang and Lincoln either (0.9:1).

@Abegweit: yeah, that's not a gambit in your save... It's just that doesn't seem worth it now (as you said, your position is dominant, and scientists value is decreasing... time to put the hammers in military!)

@Carl: yeah, I noticed you were one the few (if not the one ) with engineering... the trebs + phants should just be enough.
The relative position (you compared to the AIs) will as you said be more in your favor after the war... we can perhaps vassalize Sury (will need probably a second push) and move on Cathy with rennaissance weapons...

@Kaleb

I am away from a Civ PC for 2 weeks and can not check out the saved games. Could you please post a couple of pictures of what your empire looks like and anything you deem important e.g. Techs/Cities/Relations and etc.

I will do my best to cast my votes based on available info. We do have some very strong saves, going at this pace, we should be able to call a "win" within another 1-2 rounds. It is not fun beating on the poor AIs with Cavalry/cannon agaist lowbow or Infantry/Artillary against rifle.

Two points come from this. First, the start was simply too good to qualify as an immortal game.?


I think having the game checked by an outsider to warn of excessively good land and AI layouts would be a good idea.

Note: I am almost done with my game. It's about 1700 and I'm teching for a totatlly peaceful space race win. It will be the first immortal level game I've won (well if I ever finish it!) without declaring war at all.

@DMOC

I wouldn't worry too much about it. This was freaky or, as Snaaty put it, brutally good. Anyone good enough to judge is someone I'd want playing. If it turns out like this again, well, c'est la vie. I'm more concerned by the fact that the first round was somewhat too long and the second far too short.

I might volunteer to check for suitable maps as I don't have time to play all the games I'd like to play and I'm currently bent on playing deity.
I would ideally need some criteria to go by though..

@Kaleb

I am away from a Civ PC for 2 weeks and can not check out the saved games. Could you please post a couple of pictures of what your empire looks like and anything you deem important e.g. Techs/Cities/Relations and etc.

I've updated my save post with screenshots now. Sorry for the big 'ol delay :(

This is a very tough voting round...

I have a few general observations:

1. This capital is screaming for an oxford, the players closest to getting it is Jet given he has 6 large cities capable of whipping university And he has stone. RR, Abeig have Education but no stone, Kaleb has stone but no Education but prob close to bulbing Edu.

2. Research. Some players are researching down machinary/engineering for war advantage. It is interesting that these techs could be easily traded for paper/Education. In Carl's case, with Engineering he might be able to gain much more land from Sury. But this process will take a long time given the low production atm and delay education and city developments. Besides, there are plenty of good land to work with already.

3. City placement, some cities are place that many tiles are not usable. With exception of intention of claiming multiple important resources.

4. More AP buildings for more hammers.

Most of the current saves are in clear winning positions if nothing crazy happens (e.g. getting doubled by Sury/Cathy). Abeig,RR,Kaleb have very similar games with lots of land and good tech rate :goodjob:

Will be back to cast my votes. Just too close to call.

1. This capital is screaming for an oxford, the players closest to getting it is Jet given he has 6 large cities capable of whipping university And he has stone.
I'm in Caste System, though. My intention was to slow-build the 5 Universities after Courthouses, and maybe after AP buildings.

1. This capital is screaming for an oxford, the players closest to getting it is Jet given he has 6 large cities capable of whipping university And he has stone. RR, Abeig have Education but no stone, Kaleb has stone but no Education but prob close to bulbing Edu.

Argh, DANG BLAST IT! Wrong screenshot there, that tech screenie is actually from 540AD. I do actually have Education already, notice Athens has a University already. I can check again but I think a couple of other cities are already building Unis.

I'm going for Machinery to then get Optics enabling me to get Astronomy when I go for Lib.

3. City placement, some cities are place that many tiles are not usable. With exception of intention of claiming multiple important resources.

Yeah, the NW corner has some marginal city locations, there is one definite spot by the rivers that I'll build in but I'm not sure I put Halicarnassus in the best spot

p.s I have aleady played to 840 so I can post what happened after that as a spoiler if anyone is interested...??

Abegweit sent me a very compelling PM, and I'll come with a proposition based on his message. As several people have noticed, this has been a rather short round, especially compared to the first one, and while quite a few people have some plans in mind it's not obvious to everybody what those plans are and especially how well they will come to fruition.

So, since ABigCivFan has already played his game up to 1200 AD, I propose to give a little more liberty to each player. We'll still vote (and I plan to do so after analyzing the saves tonight), still don't include our own save in the vote (too much bias ;) ), but for the next round you can play either from the save you think is best or from your own save. This way you can reach the conclusion of your plan (whether from your own game or one better suited for the same plan) and in a way validate the choices you've made by 600AD.

The reason for which I still want us to vote is that I know I wouldn't be in the position I am now without Abegweit's first round. I still have a lot to learn at Immortal and analyzing the current saves and voting on them will help me (and I think will help us all).

For the next game we'll probably change round length to go 4000BC-1AD-1000AD-1600AD-victory, so we can more easily each of our plans unfolding.

The new round length looks good.

How about we allow each player to play from EITHER the winner of the round Or his own save for each round? Then at the end of each round have a bit more strategy discussion to point out other saves strength and weakness. That would make this cookbook series even more educational and fun.

Here is my vote:

Kaleb 3pts
Abeig 2pts
RR 1 pt

Yeah, I was torn between playing from "my save or the save I deem best" or "my save or the save we deem best". I guess the latter is more in the spirit of the series.

Not sure whether to extend this to the series itself or not; the voting process tries to eliminate the bias toward our own save, but at the same time if we don't manage to convey all our plans when presenting our saves others will probably miss things we take for granted or "see" subconsciously. What I don't want the series to become is a way to show our game without much interaction between players as the learning process would be slowed down a lot.

I propose to extend the "own save or best save" for the rest of this game, as it's a bit of a learning experience in term of organizing this series and draw a conclusion at the end of it.

This is a very tough voting round...

I have a few general observations:

1. This capital is screaming for an oxford, the players closest to getting it is Jet given he has 6 large cities capable of whipping university And he has stone. RR, Abeig have Education but no stone, Kaleb has stone but no Education but prob close to bulbing Edu.Stone is easy to get in all saves. However this whole discussion is a little off base, since the real question is what the objective is. We haven't discussed that at all. If the objective is a completely peaceful space win, then Oxford is important. Even more important, however, is the potential empire which the save can support, both in terms of the capital and elsewhere. If the objective is war, then Oxford is secondary to getting key military techs. In this regard Carl, with Engineering, is the leader ATM.

2. Research. Some players are researching down machinary/engineering for war advantage. It is interesting that these techs could be easily traded for paper/Education. In Carl's case, with Engineering he might be able to gain much more land from Sury. But this process will take a long time given the low production atm and delay education and city developments. Besides, there are plenty of good land to work with already.Agreed. Carl's save is a special case. For the others, the Liberalism race is more important.

Especially with a Philosophical leader and stone easily available I tend to go all out for Oxford. However, in this game we've had a lot of cottaged cities and few that would quickly generate great persons and that's what delayed Education for me. Waiting for Sparta (I think?) to generate a GS is probably suboptimal, but since I'm already ok production-wise I don't mind losing it to great person generation.

Plus, I've had bad experiences with having a low power at Immortal so far: in the first IMC I've been double declared on while Pleased with both leaders (one of which was really far from me, so no shared borders) and you can see what happened in this one. So I chose diplomacy (didn't work with Sury, but so far worked with Cathy and Bismark) and military techs + military build-up at a time when I'm usually calmly building universities.

This all resulted in me having Machinery & Engineering before Education, and the current war plus the fact that I unlocked HE and have an MI makes me think I'll hold off building Oxford for a while as the production cities will focus on troops. I'm trying to adapt my game to both the map and the current situation and I hope it will all go well.

The reason why Oxford in this game is so important is because most players derive most of his research from the capital. And the best possible way to boost empire research ATM IS Oxford. We also have the cheap universities.

And since many saves are cottage heavy, the next big boost will come from Democracy. Of cause, a representation powered SE will be quite powerful here as well.


I am focusing on research/growth/production in my cities and they will be very well suited for troop production. (check out my troop production capability in my 1200AD save)


Higher research will get you the key military techs sooner than others, higher research will also get you the more important production/research/growth enhancing techs sooner as well. And the early advantage grows exponentially.

This is a large map, you will need more than a single key military tech to win dom/conquest. Commerce/Research is the true driver to achieve the most dominating victory, any victory.

Your assessment is entirely correct about boosting research and its benefits. However we are already ahead in tech compared to the AIs. Being even more ahead is an option. Building an army of Trebs/Maces/War Elephants is another. Even after building an army we'd have no problem getting Liberalism ahead of the AIs, so the choice isn't between army and Liberalism. It's between army + later Liberalism and Liberalism + later army.

Oh, and just to clarify, I think both options are doable. Faced with a similar choice in EMCI I went for boosted teching when others went with enlarging their teritorry through war.

As I said, for the long term game Oxford is only one of several considerations. Two rounds difference in its acquisition do not make or break the game. Other important things include the diplomatic situation, the long-term potential of the capital, city placement and the overall empire.

Short term considerations: I expect to have the AI on the mat real quick. Cathy is very backward (doesn't have CoL or Machines) and Sury is even worse off so I might well start the wars earlier than Cannons, maybe at Engineering. Machinery is available in my save but I don't want to break my monopolies to get it. Still... if someone gets frisky, I certainly will.

Edit: x-post with Carl. Most of the same points.

Yes, the options at this point really do not matter too much given our superior position. I fully expect anyone can take down the backwards Sury with Mace/Treb/phants at a slightly slow pace. Curi/Cavalry/Spies/cannons would probably lead to a faster domination victory.

Also, strategically I would target Cathy first since she has a lot of land and is capable of catching up in tech rather quickly.

It would make more sense to have these discussions when the game is tight and competition is more stiff.

Yep. Cathy is certainly the normal target. Aside from what you said, she is stronger and can't be trusted. Of course, Carl didn't have a choice in the matter.

I did, but I decided to spare her and fight only one war at a time. ;)

Curi/Cavalry/Spies/cannons would probably lead to a faster domination victory.

Also, strategically I would target Cathy first since she has a lot of land and is capable of catching up in tech rather quickly.


I totally agree with those two points... A mediaval war is always longer because of castles (which gunpowder units ignore).
And Cathy has to go first because of its land (Carl's save excepted ;) )...

Carl talked about the lib -> war or war -> lib dilemma... I always hesitate on this a this level... I am more confident at emperor but immortal AIs's production seem much much better, that's why I am aiming to Steel... to have a better advantage... perhaps a bad judgement here (immortal veterans?).

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

immortal AIs's production seem much much better

Indeed. I guess bringing Bismark in the war was a good decision after all. One vs one against Sury would probably have been a tie, as even with less advanced units the numbers he'd have available to throw at me would have kept me in place.

In my game later on...

I get Great Library, Lib->Astronomy, and then trade for the Engineering. I already have a couple of Elephants when Sury declares war. Bismark joins the party and no sooner have I killed Sury's stack than Sury is retreating to defend against Bismark. Very funny! :lol:

I am trading a lot with Cathy but I still need to boost my deterrent to prevent her attacking me whilst I crap on Sury.

Comparative analysis:

ABigCivFan - Great capital. Weak military but good diplomacy to keep Sury (who's Friendly) and Cathy (Pleased) out of our hair. Still place to expand, and we're building settlers for it. Not sure we'll get the barb cities. Then again, the AI proved incapable of getting them until now! :lol: Heroic Epic unlocked, need to backfill Aesthetics and Literature for it (not that it's a problem...). Universities -> Oxford plan well on its way.

Raskolnikov - good tech lead except on Lincoln and Wang who are "only" behind in Education and the soon to be finished Liberalism. And the free tech. Ok, they're all behind. :D Good expansion, although I (obviously) would have liked the southern barb city too. More powerful than the CivFan, but worse relations with Sury. Luckily, Sury is otherwise engaged. ;)

King Morgan - a bit behind the other saves, although still in an ok position. The city at the "city here" sign will go to Cathy who has a settler there already, but there are a couple more cities to found/capture (second barb city). Sury's Friendly, so no problems from there.

Abegweit - good expansion, with chances to take Visigoth too. Good teching. Sury Cautious and with troops near our borders though. Me not like. :lol: And Cathy's also Cautious, which might pose problems if Sury declares on us. We should improve the diplomatic situation unless we want a two front war. Fortunately we have Feudalism for Longbows. (never thought I'd get to say that!) We're also building forge in quite a few cities, which means our production will rise soon. That should keep us out of trouble.

Jet - Interesting choice to go for Gunpowder now. Although we'll need Metal Casting, Machinery and Engineering to research/bulb Chemistry. Should be doable with trades/self research. Just go within one turn of Liberalism and backtrack. Pleased with Cathy, Friendly with Sury, give me peace of mind. :)

Kaleb - Interesting choice to get both Shwedagon Paya and the Great Library. Running Free Religion early is a good thing in such a charged religious climate. ;) Sury on the other hand is a bit worrying. I assume that the few troops that he has in your territory are there due to the tile changing owners. We're at peace for now but we should take measures to either increase our diplomatic rating with him, or our power, or both.

Votes:

1. Raskolnikov - 3 points
2. ABigCivFan - 2 points
3. Kaleb - 1 point

@Carl. Good analysis. :goodjob: You certainly spotted the defect in my game - diplomacy and especially the danger of a back-stabbing AI. However the window for an attack by either Cathy or Sury is extremely small. Not only do I have longbows but I can get maces any time I want and both civs are backward. It would be annoying to get my iron pillaged before the second source comes online in about 7 turns. :lol: There are also possible allies in war against either of them.

Here's my comments as a supplement to Carl's. I basically agree with everything he said but thought some additional points might be in order.

Kaleb: Excellent tech rate. By far the best in this category, which after all may well be the most important category of all. Odd research path though. Danger! Sury is cautious and in WHEORN. Kaleb is the logical target. Since the DoW is to be expected, the research path may not be so odd after all. ;)

Carl Corey: Yet another DOW! :eek: Seems to be afflicted by them. The barb galley and the pillaged crabs in the north is still more bad luck. On the plus side, he has dealt with said afflictions quite well. While he is quite a bit behind most other saves in the tech race, his opponents are even further back. Capital has been whipped badly but, as tech is not an issue, who really cares. :lol:

RR: relative to other saves the tech rate is poor and the opponents advanced. Also agree with CivFan that the GPs were not used optimally. Still... these are just minor drawbacks. Generally good overall.

ABigCivFan: played well.

Overall: very little to choose between the top five saves or so. My (hairpin) choices:

Votes:

Carl Corey: because it's a different game and has been well-played.

RR: top in score. No big drawbacks.

Kaleb: that tech rate is awesome!

Hey, just because we can play from our own save doesn't mean that we don't have to vote! :) So far I've seen 4 votes, that leaves 3 people who have submitted a save and haven't voted. This doesn't make me very likely to continue with the rule of "own save or best save" in the future.

Edit: 4 votes and 3 who haven't voted. Missed Ras's votes on the previous page.

Man, I wish I'd had more time to go through each save in the details I wanted, but I've got enough of an idea as to who I want to vote for.

My votes:

Abeg 3pts - Strong tech rate. Haven't traded a number of techs so I will be able to that how I want to :D Decent military so I don't need to build any for a bit. I don't want too much of a deterrent as I actually WANT Sury to invade.

BigCivFan 2pts - Aslo a good tech rate, which will be even better once Oxford comes in. A war with either Sury or Cathy will be a good way to compensate for a lack of well developed cities and a tech lead is the best way to do this. Overall relations are also very strong giving bribery options.

Raskolnikov 1 pts - Nice empire, but one big plus is that Bismark and Sury are at war with each other. Not sure I would have done tech the same way though.

p.s. Abeg you forgot to say how many votes were going to each recipient ;)

And what the heck is "WHEORN" :confused:

Correctly it is WHEOOHRN and it means "We Have Enough On Our Hands Right Now".

Great, now we have 3 players with the same number of points! (4 even, if I misunderstood Abegweit's order of votes) Might as well let everyone play from the save they want. :lol:

We're missing two people's votes, but the round will start tomorrow morning whether we get them or not.

p.s. Abeg you forgot to say how many votes were going to each recipient ;)Sorry I guess I should have been more clear but it's in order.

CC: 3
RR: 2
Kaleb: 1

I really don't think there's much to choose between any of the saves that have gotten votes, including my own, so it's arbitrary. This may explain why some folks haven't voted. I really didn't want to. Actually, the main reason I put Carl on top was because I thought his save was being underestimated. Given that they are all so close, that strikes me as about the best reason for a choice that I could come up with.

And what the heck is "WHEORN" :confused:CC gave the right abbreviation. To amplify on what it means, if you ask the AI to declare war on another civ and it responds with this then it either is already at war or building up for one. In the latter case, the victim has already been chosen and I seriously believe that you are IT.

raskolnikov 3 points
kaleb 2 points
abegwait 1 point

I'm not in favor of playing from different saves. I prefer one line of play.

Jet, the point was first made more for this round which was deemed a bit too short to showcase our plans. (I agree with that point.) Plus the near equality of points for different saves comes from playing from two already very strong saves in round 1, not something that will happen often, as we might still struggle after the first round in games with worse land.

So your objection is noted ;) for future rounds/games, so is ABigCivFan's. As I said before I'm somehow on the fence with this, leaning more towards keeping it classical (all play from "best" save). That's why round lengths have been remodelled for future challenges in order to let everyone both make a plan and see it through in a round, so that votes after a round are made on the result of the plan, and not only its preparation.

So, for round 2, the winner save is Raskolnikov's, with 10 points, closely followed by Abegweit with 8 and ABigCivFan and Kaleb with 7. As a result round 3 starts today, ends Thursday, November 27th (or earlier if all saves are submitted), with play from either Raskolnikov's save or your personal save. Round length is up to 1200AD. That leaves poor Raskolnikov with a single choice I'm afraid. ;) Please say in your round 3 report from which save you started.

Round 4 will most probably feature play from only the best save(s).

First two posts in the thread have been edited with information about the next round. For a link to RRRaskolnikov's save, see post#2. Rule#5 about "playing from best save" has also been edited to add what happens in case of a tie. Round 4 will extend from 1200AD to 1700AD, with round 5 the final round (if needed).

I'll join a future challenge. Indeed you'd need longer rounds i think so you can clearly judge the results of a plan. But longer rounds have disadvantages too.

Alternatively you could implement a structure like this,

Own save - Not elected
Choice own save/elected save
Own save - Not elected again :eek:
Have to play elected save now. repeat.

This way you can play 2 rounds with your own save if you choose to do so. There should be time to fully implement a plan now. Not perfect too i realize but you can have more rounds this way while still giving everyone time to show what they had in mind.

That leaves poor Raskolnikov with a single choice I'm afraid. ;)
:lol: fair enough, I had the choice between two amazing saves at the previous round... ;)
I like Dirk's format, a player can fully implement a plan and if it fails (or simply is not the best one), plays from another save after 2 rounds.
Good look to you all for round 3...

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

CC gave the right abbreviation. To amplify on what it means, if you ask the AI to declare war on another civ and it responds with this then it either is already at war or building up for one. In the latter case, the victim has already been chosen and I seriously believe that you are IT.

well you're absolutely right about that - DoW comes around 800AD, thankfully not earlier as by then I was ready for it.

I'll play from my own save as had mistakenly played to 840AD already and think it's gotten quite interesting :)

I didn't read Dirk's suggestion in this thread before I posted in the deity Bismarck thread so I'll just copy my post from there since it pertains to the discussion Dirk initiated here. It's yet another possible structure for future games.

What do you say about this:
We start another immortal cookbook variant (at normal speed pleeease). Pick a really bad leader like Saladin and something that promises to be a crappy start.

Then there's a vote for each round where the 3 best/most popular saves are selected per usual. Then you play the next round from any of those three except you can't choose your own save.
This way there'd hopefully be a few more players (difficult leader and start but still immortal level) and less incentive to go for short-term gains to make your save get more votes since you're not allowed to continue on it in any case. Since players should grow less attachment to their saves knowing ahead of time that they won't continue on it (at least the next round), hopefully each player will look at it objectively and ask themselves how to make the most out of the round for everyone else (short and long term) and the debates would likewise be less polarised.

I think this way a situation would also be avoided where one or a couple of player's saves are continually dominating and having spent more time and thinking on it those players continue to have an advantage moving forward since they know the long-term plan whilst the rest of the players have to try to figure that out whilst at the same time being dissapointed that their own save has never been elected which could affect them to drop out of the game.

Gliese, your suggestion does sound interesting. And I am very interested in joining this cookbook series, as well (unfortunately, I was too late for this one). However, I think you need to make a compromise between those who want to learn Immortal and those who already feel comfortable on Immortal and are looking for a challenge (below Deity). So, I would suggest either crappy land or a crappy leader, but not both simultaneously - at least in the beginning.
(Oh, and I would also prefer normal speed.)

Gliese, your suggestion does sound interesting. And I am very interested in joining this cookbook series, as well (unfortunately, I was too late for this one). However, I think you need to make a compromise between those who want to learn Immortal and those who already feel comfortable on Immortal and are looking for a challenge (below Deity). So, I would suggest either crappy land or a crappy leader, but not both simultaneously - at least in the beginning.
(Oh, and I would also prefer normal speed.)

Well then if people are interested in this idea, let's play an average leader, like say Izzy, and make sure the start looks like crap. :)

I could check the save if necessary. A crappy capital can have tons of great land to expand into.

Or maybe instead of running a crappy start on Immortal we could go play Deity?

I'm fine with deity, it depends on the general interest.

Heh, you can certainly go play Deity. :) I'm just starting on Immortal, and yes, this was a good position + good leader, and even then I managed to create problems for myself in the first round. I'm yet to figure out how much I can build/expand before costs put my units on strike, how to counter Immortal level barbs, etc. If someone thinks Immortal is too easy, by all means, create a Deity cookbook and play there. But I'll still run an Immortal one, as this is what I'm interested in at the moment. And I have no problems with someone's save being picked several times over in one game; maybe the guy plays a bit better and we can all learn from him, maybe he just had a better plan for that particular map and as long as he explains it well it's interesting to follow it. I at least am not here to win rounds, but to learn to play on Immortal. Not long ago I nearly dropped at Monarch because, after playing less frequently, I felt that even Emperor was a little too much at times. Now after playing the Emperor/Immortal cookbook's I'm feeling comfortable at Emperor again. For me, these series have been a success. :goodjob:

Hi,

I think running both an immortal and a deity cookbook is the way to go... the levels are so different, and it seems there is interest for both difficulty (I would myself be happy to get axe rushed by deity barbs :lol: )...
Of course the next immortal cookbook is likely to have a worst start than this one, so we will face more challenges probably...

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

@carl corey and RRRasklonikov

Well i posted my first reaction here, as what i saw as a possible slight improvement on a format that's already been clearly successful here. As i said i'll probably join next round whatever just to see how this format plays out.

Gliese's playing his second public deity game right now, i just posted my third open deity game challenge but there weren't many takers until now. Problem is Gliese and also i ( and maybe a few others too) seek a steeper challenge while staying in a format like this. so i think Gliese , I and some others who think they're up to the challenge should eventually create our own thread without messing to much with this one. I'm a bit sorry really to have messed with this one, not really good thinking on my part. As CellKu suggested minor frustration on my part on lack of interest in what i think should have been a very interesting game.

I like the ideas Gliese's proposed here btw but before we go ahead to create something like this on deity level it's probably good for both of us to play the current format once to get a better idea about how it plays out.

I've never even tried Deity as normally Immortal, or even Emperor on a huge map, is hard enough for me. Might like to give it a go though :)

Anyone plan on continuing this game?

Edit - game for me is done, won diplo around 1700 (maybe before? I don't remember).

Hi,

me at least... i will try to post my save today...
Since I subscribed to the forum, I hardly find time to play :lol:, posting can be so time consuming...

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

edit: played, went well... expect a report tonight :)
building cannons to invade Cathy... but I looked at ABCFan's spoiler and I've to say that his empire is far better specialized than mine!:goodjob:

Anyone plan on continuing this game?

Of course. Round 3 reports aren't due until tomorrow. :) I've got 100 or so years more to play with no major decision in them, just build some units. Will probably post the save & report tonight.

Count me out of round 3, been sent away on business again.

Cheers

Finished round 3, but it's too late now to post the report. Short summary:

Continued from my save, to see if Cathy was going to backstab me. No such thing happened. Took another city from Sury (crappy one so far), finally saw a stack from him so took peace. Went for Military Tradition. Late in the round Cathy declared on Wang and as I didn't want her to vassalize him I declared on her. Took 4 cities so far.

:hatsoff:

round3:
I planned to take on Cathy, the strongest opponent, first. So the round was devoted to acquire the military techs needed and make the troops build up.
I chose to take liberalism in 600 AD. I calculated more than 40 turns with the GNP at that time to tech to chemistry (and take steel of liberalism)... I thought that woudn't work so i took PP out liberalism... I thought cumulative advantages would pay off...
Switched to FS and FR (FS was not needed but as I didn't planned on the Taj, I didn't want to loose a turn in anarchy).

Tech path was engeenering->gunpowder->steel-> MS (3 turns to go). I backfilled some techs like Music and Theology ( :smoke:, even now I don't know why I did these trades ???)
We are currently building cannons in our three production cities and in some other cities which don't need major infra anymore.
Oxford is not started yet because I build markets first and then prioritize troops everywhere (almost). That's what you get when you lack the HE :lol:
I think we will declare in about 5, 6 turns... after MS and some upgrades...

Diplo is good, Cathy is friendly (gave her music I think to achieve this), and Sury is pleased... I refused a tribut from Bis (engeenering I think) because he will be soon be busy with Sury. I can bribe those two at least into war before moving my SOD.

I have a monopoly on liberalism, PP, gunpowder, chemistry, and steel... The wars should not be too difficult i hope :).

Some screenies:

Techs:
http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0337.jpg

Diplo:
http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0336.jpg

Power graph:
http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0338.jpg

General view of the empire:
http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0339.jpg

A funny screenshot for Attacko's lovers: i managed to train stealth workers!
http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0333.jpg

Sum up:
the good-> nice tech lead-> war against Cathy seems really doable (which would secure a win)!
the bad -> no HE :( ... I weren't able to make a level 4 unit... I can't remember the last time it happened to me... though I have really nice prod cities with forges (and caste + chemistry means 5 hammers for plains workshop!)... I plan to build it and the IW in the next peace time (before moving on Sury)... but still that's such a waste! Hopefully, we will get some GG from the war with the russians to make military academies...
Also i am still at 12 cities... with no very good sites left, I choose to put the hammers in the military build up... and I am first in production anyways. It's best to take the cities from Cathy!

Finaly, after playing, I looked at ABigCivFan's report and I see he chose cavs as dominant troops as opposed to my grens and cannons... I am too used to marathon, but in normal speed, this choice seems way more appropriate :goodjob:...


Cheers,
Raskolnikov

Round 3 report, from my save:

Pre-turn:

Athens, Sparta and Mycenae switched to Macemen. Corinth to build the Trebs, Thebes the War Elephants.

Set research to Nationalism. Will try to get Military Tradition from Liberalism, then self research Gunpowder for Cuirassiers.

Start of the round:

Continue war with Sury. Cut Angkor Wat's land route to the rest of the empire.

Take Angkor Wat.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%203/img1.jpg

Meet Sury's stack near his capital, so I'll have to make peace. For now. :)

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%203/img2.jpg

Cathy starts a golden age. Pretty good choice, especially with all her land. I double-bulb Education and start building Universities in cottaged cities. Finish Nationalism, start on Liberalism.

Bismark asks to convert to Judaism. Drat, a few turns more and I would have been in Free Religion. I hate to disappoint him, but I have to decline with Cathy's power rising near me.

Wang and Link get Paper, and Wang also has Philo, so I decide it's time to trade:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%203/img3.jpg

"Unfortunately" only Lincoln has Guilds, so I only get Feudalism in trade. Not bad though.

Capital starts on Jewish Temple followed by Forge. Probably going to build Taj Mahal in it.

Corinth finishes HE, set build to infinite twice-promoted Trebs & Maces.

Link has 660 gold out of the blue, I decide to make it count by trading Philo. Darius gets 400 next turn, I sell him Music for it. :lol: Link has Education and Guilds, will certainly shoot for Economics.

Finish Liberalism in 1020AD, take Military Tradition from it. Research set for Gunpowder.

Cathy and Darius are ready to sign a Defensive Pact with me. I'd rather have Cathy on my side, but Wang, Darius and Link are all annoyed with her, and Bismark is cautious. Sury is pleased, but who's asking him? On the other hand Wang is Friendly with Darius, Bismark and Link are Pleased.

Question of the day: do I switch to Free Speech for happy teching (to where?), do I switch to Nationalism (draft Muskets & whip Cuirassiers) or stay in Bureaucracy for Oxford/Taj? With 888 gold in the Treasury I can easily afford to set research to 100%, which gives me Gunpowder in three turns. I'll have 7 drafting cities if needed, 4-5 for Cuirassiers.

In the end I decide to go with Nationhood and of course Free Religion; Cuirassiers are good enough to take down Cathy.

Sury becomes a vassal of Bismark. It's cool, actually. One less problem from that side. I keep a few troops near the border for now, in case Bizzy gets busy. ;)

Finished Gunpowder, set research to Chemistry->Military Science for Military Academies and Grenadiers.

Link gets Nationalism too, so I decide to sell it to Wang for Guilds and some money. I'm not planning to build the Taj anymore, I don't have any bonuses to speed it up and I'm already gearing up for war.

Finally, Cathy declares war... on Wang. She's probably powerful enough to finish him/vassalize him, I can't have that. I wait a turn to let her move all her troops south, then I declare war. I'm not very prepared for this, but reinforcements will come steadily from now on and she won't be able to counter anyway.

By the end of the round I manage to take four of her cities:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%203/img4.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%203/img5.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%203/img6.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Immortal%20Cookbook%20II/Round%203/img7.jpg

We just got Economics, so we can revolt to Free Market. Tech-wise we have a monopoly on Military Tradition, Liberalism, Chemistry and soon Military Science. Only important tech out there is Constitution, as for now I don't care for Compass-Optics-Astronomy line. We can follow up with Steel and Replaceable Parts & Rifling.

We have updated maps from Darius and Wang. The bad news is that Cathy still has an ivory near Darius's border. The good news is that Wang hasn't lost a city so far, so Cathy is having problems on both fronts. (Might be because I traded Gunpowder to Wang. ;) )

We have a Great General in the capital, waiting; he could build a Military Academy in there in a few turns. A second MA could go in Sparta; we need to build some workshops in there. Visigoth doesn't look bad either.

All in all, it's an easy ride. I didn't draft at all, didn't need to, but in case of emergency a lot of our cities can draft. Plan is to finish Cathy, then go for Wang and Darius.

Question about ABigCivFan's save:

I don't understand why you built HE in the capital. It's a cottage city, with an Academy and Oxford. How does commerce and building units mix? I'd rather build HE in a hammer city, one that doesn't need to build Library, University, Oxford, etc. Yes, the other city isn't boosted by Bureaucracy, but it would build units for a much longer time than a commerce city that needs research boosters and money boosters.

Also, what are we teching to? We have the techs to completely stop teching and simply build/buy units all over the place and take over the world. Getting to Infantry won't speed things up, the AI won't be able to deal with Rifles/Cavalry anyway. Not saying the save's not good, on the contrary, it's too good to still want to "improve" on the tech front! :D But we're behind in power although there's no reason for it. :confused:

For those who are interested in future IMCs, there's a poll that lets you choose the rules you want for it in terms of what save to play for: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=300567

@Carl:



If you see the production power and tech lead of my empire, there should not be any concerns about power, capital is producing 1 cavary every turn.

My teching plan is Steam power-Assembly line-Rail road---- beeline Artillary - shut down.

My empire has 6 powerful cities built by river, I am running US/Enmacipation. With fully mature cottages + levee + Factory/coal plant + railroad mines this empire will be an extremely efficient war machine. It wont take much longer to get there given the high tech rate and fast maturing cottage all over. with railroad and prod power you will see the AIs falling like domino and reaching a fast domination.

It should not be very hard to tell from my save that this empire is built for a single, sustained war to reach domination.

With matured cottages, capital is hammer rich, it already has every improvements built and now can be a great military city that is why HE is built here. After levee i can go Free Speech and it will still produce 1 cav/infantry/arty per turn.

Sorry, late as usual. Had to rush the last turns so didn't do as well as I would have liked

Save is attached, report coming

I will probably post some screenies of 1 turn after 1200 because a fair few things happen in that turn.

Just for reference, at 100% I have -207G and 1080 science

1200 AD From Raskolnikov save.

Got the barb city Visigoth with Catherine's "help".

Built a bunch of Workers (we now have 18) and developed cities either for cottages or farms and workshops.

Surya declared in 800. I fought defensively, getting a level 4 unit, and a GG which was settled in Corinth.

Teched Engineering, Gunpowder, Chemistry, then Wang had just gotten Education, so I finished Liberalism in 1070 for Steel.
Traded Liberalism+Gunpowder to Lincoln for PP+Optics and to Wang for war on Catherine. I just thought it would be more convenient to attack Surya, since he had attacked first. At some point, Bismark and Darius joined in on Catherine (:mischief:).
Later traded Gunpowder to Darius for Guilds.
Other trades were Silk to Lincoln for Gems, and minor refusals to Lincoln, Wang, Surya, Catherine.

After Steel, Nationalism, then Military Science, 3 turns left in 1200.

I stayed in Caste although I wasn't really happy with it for that part of the game, and in hindsight I am convinced that a switch to Slavery in 600 would have been better. After Nationalism it was 2 turns for Nationhood + Slavery, so I hired a few more specialists and popped a merchant in 1200, intending to use it for a golden age and switch to Nationhood + Slavery + Free Religion.

Buildings are fairly light because of Caste System. Have most Courthouses but not all, no FP, no AP buildings, just finished 6th University with no hammers in Oxford. 1 turn from HE. Some Forges, and Barracks pretty much everywhere for drafting. Military is pretty light too, just some defensive Muskets and 7 Cannons.

Bismark won the AP seat in 1100. As a cliffhanger, in 1200 there was an AP vote to declare on Catherine (I voted no). Surya will take peace on good terms if needed.

http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee216/athenai777/CFC/immortal-cookbook-II-1200.jpg

@ABigCivFan:


I guess I kinda see your point, but I'm not used to that kind of play. With such a big military advantage you could easily take out Cathy, Wang and Darius. I don't see what the advantage is in fighting it all at once. You have less land for a longer time, you run the risk of being declared on since you're weak, or the big military forces will attack weak AIs and vassalize them and you'll have to fight more than one at a time. Yeah, you're producing 1 cavalry per turn from the capital. But 1 cavalry versus 5-10 older troops will still lose. 3 cavalries won't. It's as simple as that for me.

@Carl



Why would I fight everyone at the same time? I will kill them one at a time and win domination. It will be a sweeping military campaign without needing any pauses. I made my plans like this because I want to finish this game quickly. The actual war will not take very long since I will soon have levees/factories/power/infantry/Railroad/Cannons/Artillary/High EP and I do not expect to face anything more than Rifles from any AI.

I am at a point that I will call all the shots in this game by bribery and DOW.

Capital is not my only production city. Within a few turns I will have a very significant army and my army will get only stronger thereafter.

I do not understand why you are making your judgement because you see I have only a few cavalries/Curis ATM. You should really be comparing the hammer counts/tech rates/diplomatic relations/EPs which are the real reflections of the strength of empires at this stage of the game.

@ABigCivFan:
Why would I fight everyone at the same time?

Oops, I wasn't clear. :) Yeah, I understand you're going to fight people one by one. The question is, is it faster to do that all in one go (as in war1-war2-...-victory) or war1-war2-peace while teching some more with more land-war3...-victory.

I made my plans like this because I want to finish this game quickly. The actual war will not take very long since I will soon have levees/factories/power/infantry/Railroad/Cannons/Artillery/High EP and I do not expect to face anything more than Rifles from any AI.

Question still stands. Is Artillery/Infantry vs Rifles better than Rifles/Cavalry/Cannons vs Longbows/Muskets? I'm not convinced. You're trying to "advance" but in the end the AI will advance just as much (percentage-wise) and you'll simply fight the same battles. Who says an AI won't get to Machine Guns/Infantry too in the time it takes you to tech to Artillery, build factories, levees, coal plants AND an army? You'd be in the same position of either continuing the war with similar troops or waiting to tech some more. I see it as having missed a window of opportunity for Rifles/Cavs wars, so I'm not sure it will be any faster.

I am at a point that I will call all the shots in this game by bribery and DOW.

IIRC Wang is Cathy's vassal already (or am I remembering the wrong save? If so, sorry). You've already lost part of your leverage against Cathy, and any troops the eastern block will send to attack Cathy will get there too late to be really effective. That leaves you + Darius vs Cathy + Wang. How's that better than you + Wang (+ Darius if you want too) vs Cathy?

Capital is not my only production city. Within a few turns I will have a very significant army and my army will get only stronger thereafter.

I'll wait to see that. I don't understand why it should be now though, and not earlier, since you can build essentially the same army you would have built much earlier, namely Cavs & Rifles for now.

Anyway, I'm not saying your way is bad. But if I had to choose between your save, in which you have 0.5/0.6 the power of other AIs, and one in which you didn't have Constitution/Democracy/Corporation/Steam Power (all of which give you no new units) but had a power rating on par with the AIs while currently at war and taking cities, I'll take the second any time.

@Carl



You are missing my point. I am not saying I will wait until I have every tech before I attack. I will start the war with Cav/Spies/cannons vs. Cathy, while continuously teching, and later when other AIs have Rifle I will have ARtillary/Infantry. My point is maintaining a consistant military superiority against all AIs at this point.

Using your example, if save 1 can crank out far better units faster than save 2 and have double the tech rate, I would take save 1 anytime.

Good discussion guys!
Not much to add except that I am not as confident as Carl, I don't think we will only encounter LBs from immortal AIs until the end of the game...

@ABigCivFan:



You are missing my point. I am not saying I will wait until I have every tech before I attack. I will start the war with Cav/Spies/cannons vs. Cathy, while continuously teching, and later when other AIs have Rifle I will have Artillery/Infantry. My point is maintaining a consistent military superiority against all AIs at this point.

You had the same units 4 techs ago (not counting cannons as you don't have them now either). Cavs vs medieval troops win without cannons/spies anyway; even Cuirassiers do in many situations. I think we're talking past each other here; you're saying you'll attack with Cavalry, I'm saying that by now you should have had Cathy's land too. Does anyone have Rifling now? No. Would they have it if you went to war with Cathy in the meantime? No. You seem to define military superiority in terms of what units you can produce first, I define it in terms of current power first.


Using your example, if save 1 can crank out far better units faster than save 2 and have double the tech rate, I would take save 1 anytime.


As I said before, now, 4 techs after Rifling, you are still producing the same units as then. You are not cranking units faster, you are not cranking better units. You have traded unit production for 4 techs. Again, it's not bad. It's focusing on something I'm not used to focus on. My usual play is "get military advantage/use it/get another military advantage/use it, etc.". Your play in this game seems "tech/tech/.../tech/attack".

@Ras:
Not much to add except that I am not as confident as Carl, I don't think we will only encounter LBs from immortal AIs until the end of the game...

Not saying we will either. I'm saying you can safely fight 3 wars, even if the AIs get Muskets, or the last AI will have a few Rifles at the end of the war. Nothing stops you from teching further once you take out Cathy/Wang/Darius.

@Carl



It is amazing that you mentioned Constitution/Democracy/Coporation/Steam Power does not give me new units.

They do not give new units, but they enable civis(US/Emancipation)/buildings (levee) that double/triple my hammer counts + fast growing cottages in multiple cities :crazyeye:.

And I already switched to Theo committing to troop productions. I still dont understand why you are making all your arguments at 1200AD, my save has the potential of winning domination in the 1700's. As I said, I am not spending too much time on this game, teching is fast, and war will be fast too.

@ABigCivFan:


It is amazing that you mentioned Constitution/Democracy/Corporation/Steam Power does not give me new units.

I think there's a misunderstanding again. I'm saying those techs don't give you any new types of units. Best troops before them: Cavalry/Rifles. Best troops 4 techs later: Cavalry/Rifles. If Cavalry/Rifles win now, Cavalry/Rifles were even better before. You're making the argument that these units can't finish the job, I'm saying their job wasn't to finish the game, but to win two-three wars.


They do not give new units, but they enable civics(US/Emancipation)/buildings (levee) that double/triple my hammer counts + fast growing cottages in multiple cities


US gives you one hammer/town. Boosted by Bureaucracy and HE in the capital, sure, but you'll still build at most one unit per turn in there. Not all cottages have grown into towns, and the fact that 4 towns give you the same amount of production from US as 1 CS/Chemistry workshop doesn't support your point. 4 towns produce half the production of 2 farms + 2 workshops. Yes, your tech rate is slower, but that's my point! You don't need more techs for now. Emancipation mostly boosts your tech rate too, it only boost your production once the cottages fully mature. And levees will indeed boost your hammers too, but they need to be built! That happens AFTER four techs.

And I already switched to Theo committing to troop productions. I still don't understand why you are making all your arguments at 1200AD, my save has the potential of winning domination in the 1700's. As I said, I am not spending too much time on this game, teching is fast, and war will be fast too.


I'm saying that had you started building units everywhere when you got to Rifling your save would have probably been won 100 or more years earlier. Yes, that doesn't really matter, as it's won either way. Yes, standing back and teching to an even more impressive unit difference may be simpler.* But you're keeping yourself weaker for more of the game. :shrug: It's a risk assessment question: I perceive a risk in your strategy that you don't. To each his own. :)

*I guess it's like trying to find the killer combination in chess when you're already a knight ahead and know that it's a simple win by simply trading pieces. I've done the latter quite a few times, so I'm not saying what you're doing is bad. :)

@Carl:
I agree with ABigCivFan when he said that there is no point in stopping the research... I will stop it to upgrade my troops then up the slider again... the two reasons to slow research that I can see are: you lack spy points on your target, or you have too much unhappy people due to wars... I could be wrong though

@Carl



What risk? Sury is friendly and engaged with Daruis. And I am amassing Cavs/spies to crush Cathy.

And you keep missing the most important points in my strategy. I dont "take it easy" just because I am already ahead. I play to continuously improve my overall winning chance.

Take a look at my report, I had 13 towns in capital @1200AD, running Univ. Suff. gives 13 FREE base hammers, these hammers dont need food to support oppose to your CS/chemistry workshops. With bonus when producing troops, these 13 hammers = 13 * 2.75 = 35.75 hammers/turn.

Next with levee, it will give this capital 19 more FREE base hammers which is 19*2.75=52.25 hammers when producing military.

So these 2 factors boost my hammer output of 1 city by 88 hammers. If you look carefully at the other 5 river side cities, they will get very significant hammer boosts with levee.

With Enmancipation, cottages everywhere quickly turn into towns and getting those free hammers. And I will need all the hammer i could get for a fast war.

To sum things up, my strategy in this game is basically "play by map" the map (Floods heavy, with multiple long rivers, large land mass) told me that it will be a very strong CE/Bureacracy capital game with major boosts coming from CS/Education/Democracy/Steam power. And I simply stick with the plan while paid attention to diplomatic relations as not to get involved in unnecessary early wars. And win domination with a Bliz military compaign.

@ABigCivFan:


Instead of going back and forth, I'll sum up what I see is my position and what I see is yours. If you disagree, I guess no amount of arguing will settle this.

Your position: get all the techs/buildings that boost your CE, then blitz to domination. Advantage: once you get ahead in tech, you stay there until the end. War will be very fast and effortless. Cost: deferring production until late in the game makes you weak until then. Remedy: diplomacy.

My position: when I get a dominant unit, I go to war. Advantage: the power is comparable to the AIs throughout the game, so less problems in case of surprise attack and less chances of it to happen (i.e. attack from Cathy who's Cautious and has almost twice your power even if in obsolete units). Cost: teching slows through wars, wars are slower if the unit difference is not as high as in the first variant.

If you want, take a look at EMC I. I tried throughout the game to create a very well balanced empire, take advantage of cheap universities, set up Oxford in Bureaucratic capital, etc. Things went faster for the people who simply took more land even with little military advantage. So I'm not oblivious to your position at all, and I've played like that in the past (albeit rarely). It's just that all things considered I think the other way is safer and faster, that's all.

I rest my case. ;)

@carl



You need to be a little more flexible when analyzing the trade offs Land Vs. Tech Vs. Military.

In this game, there is already enough great land to develop your empire(i.e. grow your cities/boost tech/produciton/power). I had 12 great city spots by REX.

I did not need to expand via military early this game while I kept my neighbors friendly/pleased with Sentries watching for any troop build up.

btw in your game, how many Curis did it take to kill the Russian Pikeman fortified in that hill city without bombard down the cultural defenses?

@ABigCivFan


btw in your game, how many Curis did it take to kill the Russian Pikeman fortified in that hill city without bombard down the cultural defenses?


If you mean on the eastern front, then I suicided a catapult and a treb, and I don't think I lost any units after that. On the western front it was also slow, but I had more siege nearby.

The reasons are simple though: I declared war on Cathy not because I thought I was prepared. Hardly that. I declared because she had attacked Wang and was most probably going to vassalize him. Two of her cities were right next to my border and with my troops near them, so those fell on the first turn. The other two took a few turns. I'm at 0.9 of her power and she and Bismark are the only ones that outrank me in power, with Cathy fighting two wars at a time. And Wang is not likely to vassalize to her.

And yes, the plan is to simply continue with Cuirassiers only until Cathy is killed/vassalized. I've had some games in which I played like this, or games with Justinian in which Cataphracts took on Longbows/Pikemen/War Elephants/Knights. They were all easy wins despite having more losses than a Cavalry vs Muskets/Longbows/Pikes war.

When do we start voting Carl?

KingMorgan and Kaleb won't be able to submit a save this time and it seems Araneya is not playing the game unfortunaly... That leaves Abegweit (hurry up ;) ) to wait for...
It would be nice to elect a save before the end of the we because the round 3 has been long enough... and people will loose interest

Cheers

This is my effort. Sorry I'm late. :blush: I will modify this post with a report overnight PDT.

Report: I started from my own save. I realized that CivFan had a good point about the stone so in my second turn I whipped out the settler in Sparta and sent it to claim the rock. Sury had built a fort on it. How nice of him. :lol: Tech path continued quietly with Education and Gunpowder according to my planned notion of taking Steel from Liberalism. At this point, no one was willing to trade me Engineering and I was bedammed if I would research it on my own so I started on Nationalism, thinking Constitution or MS might be a decent alternative. I was near finished when someone, Wang I think, offered the tech. I was still well ahead in the Liberalism race so I decided to finish off Nat and take Steel after all.

Put up unis in several cities. Whipped a couple (including Knossos for two - that hurt) and the capital built Oxford after that. As soon as Oxford was finished I used my saved GA for a Golden Age. The capital built the Taj (we do have marble, after all) while the rest of the cities (except Knossos) built basic infra and military.

I whipped a LOT of military. So many cities... so much to be whipped... Around 1050AD Cathy went into WHEOOHRN. I searched around for her stack and troop movements. It seemed pretty clear that her target was Darius. I considered letting her have her war and shifting my troops around to wipe out Sury. However all my men were poised for the attack against her and it would have taken about six moves to turn the machine around. So I continued on with the original plan, despite her focus on military. Two cities have fallen and a third will come down next turn.

The Taj came in. We are near the end of our second GA and Democracy is due one turn. It is time for a big change in civics.

A couple of screenshots. First the capital.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/9d389b67.jpg

Not sure how realistic this is since it is taken in GA @100 science. Still, as I read it, those are the conditions where ABCF took his capital shot. In contrast with that one, all the tiles are worked with no unhealth or unhappiness. There's a specialist too. Question: is this better or worse than the start? I'll let you decide. More importantly, this city has contributed absolutely nothing (other than research, of course) to the armies which are ripping Russia to shreds. I think this shows that a many-sided approach works better.

Demographics. Note the power ratings too.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm171/abegweit/8603130b.jpg

Yeap, I was waiting for Abegweit, gave him one more day.* Glad to see he's here. I think we can manage to vote this weekend, right? So that the next round starts on Monday.

*And I think it was worth it: he's first in everything! :goodjob:

RRRaskolnikov, Kaleb did post a save for this round. Araneya and KingMorgan are the only ones not posting a save.

Some comments on the saves:
- Abegweit: will drop a bit in production after the Golden Age, but since our biggest competitor in Catherine and she's losing cities right now, I think we can safely say he'll be first in everything soon enough. Should build Heroic Epic once the war with Cathy is over, but it will be a matter of turns with Marble hooked up. 19 workers and whatever else we capture from Cathy will help improve tiles around her cities fast. Great overall save.

- Kaleb: no gunpowder units other than muskets, although heading for Rifling. Last in power. Not sure why we got the Astronomy-line techs.

- Jet: at war with Sury. A bit weak, but has Cannons and will get Grenadiers soon.

- Ras: got Steel and will get Military Science in a few turns. Can get around 1600 gold in trades, enough to upgrade all our trebs and remain with 1000+ gold for deficit research. Got a stack prepared to go through Russian lands.

I've commented enough on ABigCivFan's save already, so I won't repeat myself. :)

Votes:
1. Abegweit - 3 points
2. RRRaskolnikov - 2 points
3. ABigCivFan - 1 point

ACBF 3pts powerful teching. far ahead in this department. A lot of undeveloped tiles. Not sure why that should be with a smallish empire and a good number of workers but there you have it.

RRR 2pts good empire. preparing for war.

Jet 1pts nice overall development.

@Carl I have marble. I've been thinking about the HE which has just been unlocked. Undoubtedly it will go in Corinth and should be started next turn. As for GDP, yeah it will decline a bit. OTOH, my main source of production has been food. Not sure why the game puts me first in life expectancy. :lol:

Many saves here are very well played, I call this game a win and will stop here. I hope everyone learned something.

@Carl I have marble. I've been thinking about the HE which has just been unlocked.

Yeah, I know, that's what I wanted to say, that since marble is hooked up you can build the HE at a discount.

Undoubtedly it will go in Corinth and should be started next turn.

I know you have lots of units already, but is it worth it to build the HE now, or should you build units instead? I've recently wondered about the opportunity of building HE and WP. Most of the time I manage to unlock HE early enough that I'll build it in a period of empire development, but WP on the other hand comes when I just got Cuirassiers and building it instead of units is probably a waste of time for the first war I fight. I wonder if it's the same case here. Anyway, a very "theoretical" discussion, as both ways will work just fine considering Cathy's power. :)

As for life expectancy, I never pay attention to those numbers, but I think they have something to do with how much you can still grow your cities (how much you have to the happiness cap). Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

@Carl. Sorry. It was clear what you meant. My bad.

As for the HE, I am convinced that the time is now. ATM, most of my military is coming from whipping. At some point I am going to have to stop and let my people get on with their lives. When that happens, Corinth and a few other cities, notably Sparta will have to take up the slack. To that end, I have stopped whipping those two cities and have been growing them instead. Add a few workshops and they will be powerful. That's another thing to do Right Now. They have grown enough.

In sum, get the HE out of the way now. It's not like there is going to be an interlude, as you seem to imply. The wars don't stop before the game is won.

That is true, it's non stop war from now on. :)

Hi :),

sorry for the delays... I got a busy week end...

ABigCivFan: A little weak for now but awesome production and science capabilities... All AIs behind... the game is almost over.

Abegweit: the game is over... impresive power!

Kaleb: Very good, but more workers could have been welcome, and also not totally ready for war

Jet: Very nice too, at war with Sury (the war with Cathy is delayed). The HE will be up next turn.

Carl: Another very good save! As Kaleb, you could have used more workers (also some cities are still small). The war with Cathy is well on its way... Just beware of Bismarck as he is growing in power.

Votes:
1 Abegweit
2 ABigCivFan
3 Carl Corey

I think all those 5 saves will lead to victories! :goodjob:

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

Many saves here are very well played, I call this game a win and will stop here. I hope everyone learned something.

I learned a lot! Thanks to you and the others players of this thread :)

you could have used more workers (also some cities are still small).

Yeah, I'm struggling with that... I almost always forget to build more workers. I didn't in an offline game in which I ended up with 25 workers for 20 cities :crazyeye:, but that's the exception. As for the small cities, I guess I overused the whip. I was planning to switch to Caste System soon enough as I've got good tiles all over the place that need to be worked.

A question, related to this: if you don't plan on running too many specialists and so stay in Slavery until late in the game, when do you stop using the whip? Is a size 10 city worth whipping (yeah, I know, pretty vague, but work with me here) or is it better to let it work its tiles? Obviously if you're producing a unit every one-two turns from it without the whip then the whip's not needed. But how about commerce cities, where a) you don't have fast regrowth potential and b) have somewhat low production. Do you wait for the building to finish in its time (save for Universities needed for Oxford, etc), or do you whip it away? A more clear example: let's say you're building a market in a city with 2 mines and 8 grassland cottages (in the late stages of development, but without US bonus to towns). Would you still whip the market? Maybe only when it gets to a 2-pop whip?

I guess it shows that I'm more familiar with playing SE. Once I switch to CS in an SE game there's no option to whip anymore, or, when I do, it's short bursts into Slavery in which I whip everything, no matter how small the cities get.

Just beware of Bismarck as he is growing in power.

I kinda put him there, didn't I? :) I could have bribed him to stop the war with Sury, and then Sury wouldn't have been his vassal. Probably should have done it, but at that moment he was quite far behind in tech and I didn't want to help him in that department, only to see him take on Sury again later. Anyway, that is indeed a point of concern in my save, and I'm constantly trying to keep Bismark happy. :)

@Carl: My input on whipping (not saying it's optimal ;)):

Exception of cities without a single mine, I try to whip only granaries, lighthouses, workers, and courts...
Then you have the emergency troops, the happy building in fast growing cities, and the culture building when you feel it's needed. With HR and drama, you can also produce the globe with overflow from troop whipping (strategy described very well in this forum)

About your example, I generally let grow my cities on cottages as much as possible... I prefer two more cottages worked than a market (of course, somtimes you have the 4 doubled luxuries...).

In the end, my focus is on "not whip too much my commerce cities", particularly the big ones (as you said the whip is less and less efficient as the city size is important).

Cheers

Just got back to my Civ4 PC, I felt I should wage some war before calling a win, as i planned before, it was a sequential war until the end.

At this point, this is just a shadow report.



As planned, I teched AL, Railroad, Artillary, picked up Biology along the way while building up troops (Cavs, Infantry, Spies).

Built Levee/Factories/coal plants in prod cities, connect all cities by railroad.

1565AD: War against Cathy

http://img19.picoodle.com/img/img19/3/11/30/f_1565ADeasywm_bdfee08.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1565ADeasywm_bdfee08.jpg&srv=img19)

1570AD: Sury wants to be my Vassal, I refused, i needed his land for Dom.

1615AD: Battle groups. Used mixed spy revolt and Artillary. Some cities have very tough defenders, Artillary minimized my losses even with spy revolts.

http://img37.picoodle.com/img/img37/3/11/30/f_1615ADbattlm_e7cfcd1.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1615ADbattlm_e7cfcd1.jpg&srv=img37)

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/11/30/f_1620ADusingm_1ca4108.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1620ADusingm_1ca4108.jpg&srv=img33)


1645AD: Teching while waring. now Tanks on line. All the infras in core cities helped teching with low science slider and absort all the unit costs and new city costs. Running State Property.

Cathy has Statue of Zues, it caused some serious WW on my cities, had to run culture slider to 50% before capturing the wonder.

http://img32.picoodle.com/img/img32/3/11/30/f_1645ADTanksm_b1742c3.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1645ADTanksm_b1742c3.jpg&srv=img32)


1650AD: Captured Moscow and a Korean triple holy city. I now have enough troops to take on 2 of them.

http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/3/11/30/f_1650ADcaptum_35ba7eb.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1650ADcaptum_35ba7eb.jpg&srv=img26)


1675AD: Captured last Russian city. The Russian war lasted about 150 years.


1680AD: Veteran troops invading Persia, Cyrus vassaled Sury, so I am invading them both at the same time.

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/11/30/f_1680ADheadim_b4fe1bd.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1680ADheadim_b4fe1bd.jpg&srv=img33)

1710AD: Empire view. With high EP and CR3 tanks and tons of high rank Cavaries, was able to Vassal Persia and Khmer very quickly. Reached pop dom limit long time ago. Now Just waiting for captured cities to pop borders. Just clicked end turn until 1750AD.

http://img19.picoodle.com/img/img19/3/11/30/f_1710ADempirm_4ae4a09.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1710ADempirm_4ae4a09.jpg&srv=img19)


1750AD: Domination reached.

http://img37.picoodle.com/img/img37/3/11/30/f_1750ADdominm_44d73cd.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1750ADdominm_44d73cd.jpg&srv=img37)


1750AD: Score

http://img19.picoodle.com/img/img19/3/11/30/f_1750ADscorem_a2e4fc6.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1750ADscorem_a2e4fc6.jpg&srv=img19)


1750AD: Dom chart.

http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/3/11/30/f_1750ADdomchm_33bb988.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1750ADdomchm_33bb988.jpg&srv=img03)


1750AD: Unit Summary. A bit over kill, multi-front war and Railroading new territory was time consuming, did not do much city MM late game.

http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/3/11/30/f_1750ADunitsm_171f003.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/11/30/f_1750ADunitsm_171f003.jpg&srv=img03)

@Carl: My input on whipping (not saying it's optimal ;)):

Exception of cities without a single mine, I try to whip only granaries, lighthouses, workers, and courts...Did you forget settlers? The best early game whip of all. How about unis as ABCF said? There's a reason why your Knossos is bigger than mine, you know. Barracks? Forges?

I whip a LOT. I whipped all this stuff in this game. And tons of military, mainly guns and cannons, as well.

Just got back to my Civ4 PC, I felt I should wage some war before calling a win, as i planned before, it was a seqential war until the end.

At this point, this is just a shadow report.I really think that you should not post reports on future events, shadow or otherwise, until the current round is finished. I think that should be a rule, whether it is a completely shadow game or a shadow play from a game save. Once the round is finished, there is nothing wrong with posting alternate results. But not before. This is the second time you have done this, this time without an excuse.

As you have apparently decided to withdraw from the cookbook, it obviously must be a shadow report.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with this. ABigCivFan could at least wait for the votes and post it afterward, it shouldn't take long. Anyway, I'm inclined to cut him some slack now, as the game is pretty much won anyway, but in future IMCs we should wait to post the reports with the round they're for, even when posting shadows.

Ok, so we've got three people who voted so far, KingMorgan who didn't play the round so doesn't vote, one missing in action and ABigCivFan who got out of this one. That leaves two people to vote. If no one votes today we'll simply continue tomorrow with round 4 from the leading save which is Abegweit's. ABigCivFan has the same score so far but he retreated from the game.

Did you forget settlers? The best early game whip of all. How about unis as ABCF said? There's a reason why your Knossos is bigger than mine, you know. Barracks? Forges?

I whip a LOT. I whipped all this stuff in this game. And tons of military, mainly guns and cannons, as well.

That's precisaly why I said it's not optimal ;)!
Whipping unis is something I am not used to do but from what I 've seen in the games here, you are right saying it's a powerfull strat... I am not convinced of the usefullness of a forge (exception of IW pre requisites, and if have enough happy to not double gold, silver, gems) and a barrack in a commerce city...
About settler, I agree that it's powerfull production wise, but I prefer to build them normally usually in the capital at least. Seefood starts gets obviously more whipped but I don't really like whipping my best city at the start of the game... I could be wrong of course.

Obvioulsy, you master the whip far better than me (I did find your military impressive, there is a reason :lol:)!

Cheers

- Kaleb: no gunpowder units other than muskets, although heading for Rifling. Last in power. Not sure why we got the Astronomy-line techs.

Yeah, I ended up doing most of this round in a big rush. Should have thought through my choices better. Just been one of those weeks sadly :(

Not enough civ time!

My votes are the same as Carl's:

Votes:
1. Abegweit - 3 points
2. RRRaskolnikov - 2 points
3. ABigCivFan - 1 point

@Abegweit - very impressive.

I've really enjoyed this exercise, it's been good to get some feedback on the way I play and to watch other people's take on the same situation. Definitely learnt something and will be looking forward to the next cook book :)

@Kaleb:

Little girls really? :lol: I know some women and guys in my team who won't be pleased! See you in the MTDG... ;)

I wonder, do people think that the schedule is a bit tight? Remember that rounds will be longer for the next game too. Maybe we should extend this to 11 days per round and 3 days of voting from round 2? Say, round 1 starts on a Monday, lasts a week, votes are from Monday to Wednesday. That way all the other rounds include two weekends.

Not that the next round here should take two weeks. I think we can safely play this in a week directly to victory from whatever save gets chosen, and dispense with an eventual fifth round.

Not that the next round here should take two weeks. I think we can safely play this in a week directly to victory from whatever save gets chosen, and dispense with an eventual fifth round.

I am for that solution... Every one play until victory or defeat (I don't think there will be any but) and then make a "debriefing" report.

I won't speak of IC3 as I won't probably have time for it unfortunaly :(. I have already the EC2 and DC1 (the map looked so great!) as well as SGs and the MTDG to play... and deadlines at work for the end of the month! Will be lurking though, waiting to have more time in January hopefully!

Wow, that's a busy schedule, Ras! Well, have fun in all the games. :) I only have EMC II and the IMC series, and offline games that can be finished at will. :D

That's precisaly why I said it's not optimal ;)!
Whipping unis is something I am not used to do but from what I 've seen in the games here, you are right saying it's a powerfull strat... I am not convinced of the usefullness of a forge (exception of IW pre requisites, and if have enough happy to not double gold, silver, gems) and a barrack in a commerce city...
About settler, I agree that it's powerfull production wise, but I prefer to build them normally usually in the capital at least. Seefood starts gets obviously more whipped but I don't really like whipping my best city at the start of the game... I could be wrong of course.

Obvioulsy, you master the whip far better than me (I did find your military impressive, there is a reason :lol:)!

CheersRe: forges. That's one thing I whipped too much. In the early game, whipping them is great. Adds both production and happiness. However, in this round I whipped them out in cities with 20 happies and little production. Just dumb. I realized that it was wrong part way through and switched to whipping barracks instead. There's probably a city or two with a couple of turns into a forge as a consequence.

As for the capital, it's a rare game I play in which it doesn't get at least hit once or twice early on, usually for settlers. This one was an exception.

Ok, Abegweit's save it is. How about we finish the round by Sunday? That way we can start the new game on Monday.

Hi eveyone,

OK for me... I will try to finish this saturday....
Can we choose from which save we play from... as the fun is over in Abegweit's save IMO :)

Cheers

edit: no problem Carl, will play from Abegweit's save and finish the AIs :hammer:

Well, I guess there's no way for me to stop you. :lol: Although I would prefer that people played from Abegweit's. For now the majority in the IMC rules poll thinks we should stick with the format of playing from the best save. If we start making exceptions here and there it kinda defeats the point of the vote.

Anyway, unless we get a ton of new votes in the rules poll, for the next challenge we will always play from the best saves (ties will be handled like in this game), and no shadows or rounds should be posted before the start of the round they're for. Otherwise you get people like ABigCivFan who played the whole game from his perspective. Good for him, but if he wants to start an Immortal walkthrough he can do it outside the cookbook, or post shadows only.

I'm happy to play from Abeg's save. It will at the very least be an opportunity to take a closer look at how he's set up his empire.

@RRR:
Yes, they are run by little girls. They also have inferior potassium fyi :D

I thought that I'd add a little analysis of lessons learned in this game. First, there are the obvious points because most of discussion on the thread has revolved around them.

1. Bureaucracy, Oxford and cottages make a powerful combination which can drive human player far past the AI in research. The two games which concentrated the most on this are well ahead of the others in research, and the one which concentrated the most is the furthest ahead of all.

2. It is not necessary to place the capital in a swamp in order to get the kind of capital described in point 1. What counts is to have plenty of cottageable tiles and enough food to support them.

I want to thank ABCF for driving the first point home to me and I would like to believe that I taught him something about the second. Among other things, I had not realised the importance of stone until he pointed it out. I definitely would not have claimed it in time without the admonishment.

There's another thing I learned from him too. I had read about elsewhere on the forum but never really understood it until I saw it in action on this thread.

To back up a little, I have always played an SE-oriented game. While not strict about it, I build very few cottages outside the capital. Many games have no cottages at all. In fact I think built more in this game than in any other I have played. Consequently my tech path has always been up the Math path towards CS. I pretty much ignore the religious line. I still don't know Priesthood in this game :lol:

In short, the thing I learned is the power of Hereditary Rule. I'm not entirely sure what to think about this, since HR is so far down a largely useless path. I hate to put effort into so many dumb techs. Still, it's undeniable that it is very very powerful. He has proved it. In fact, the big research advantage that ABCF has today is not because of his choice of capital location (I still think Snaaty found the best location of all and that mine is pretty much equivalent to the start) but rather because of his research path.

There's another thing about this game which is strange. We are Philosophical. So where in the Name of the Gods is the GP farm? Not one player, myself included, has ever had the semblance of one. At this level it's embarrassing. Really.

There's another thing about this game which is strange. We are Philosophical. So where in the Name of the Gods is the GP farm? Not one player, myself included, has ever had the semblance of one. At this level it's embarrassing. Really.

Slavery ... :mischief:.
Well, I tryed in the last round to set up a GP farm using caste (I saw one in Jet's save too) but your initial save (from which we played) had a lot of cottages for a SE player :lol:... I didn't want to destroy them...
Nevertheless, i think that even without a proper GPfarm, the early scientists produced in the first two rounds helped a LOT in establishing a solid position (lib bulbs, various academies). So philo proved to be a really solid trait for this level (:lol: how new is this...). That's the only comment I will add to a very great post Abegweit!

Cheers

I was within one turn of finishing NE in my game I think. :lol: It is a very strange situation indeed, NE in 1200AD!

@Carl: I feel the same way... With a philo leader, you got GP anyways, so sometimes you just forgot to start the NE :lol:

In short, the thing I learned is the power of Hereditary Rule. I'm not entirely sure what to think about this, since HR is so far down a largely useless path. I hate to put effort into so many dumb techs. Still, it's undeniable that it is very very powerful. He has proved it. In fact, the big research advantage that ABCF has today is not because of his choice of capital location (I still think Snaaty found the best location of all and that mine is pretty much equivalent to the start) but rather because of his research path.

There's another thing about this game which is strange. We are Philosophical. So where in the Name of the Gods is the GP farm? Not one player, myself included, has ever had the semblance of one. At this level it's embarrassing. Really.

You dont have to research those religious techs, trade for them.

GP farm at this level is most useful when the game is tight and you absolutely need the GS in time for important bulbs, or competing for Lib race.

I used my first GS to build an Academy in capital, 2nd GS bulb Education, 3rd GS to start a GA to help infras building. When we have a tech advantage like that through sheer raw research power, additional GPs do not help much. Instead, focusing on hammers on the later stage and take over the world.

I do not believe you absolutely have to have anything in this game, including a GP farm. Rather focus on working the land available and choosing the right priorities.

I was within one turn of finishing NE in my game I think. :lol: It is a very strange situation indeed, NE in 1200AD!

I never built the National Epic in my game. :crazyeye:

You dont have to research those religious techs, trade for them.I did of course. I never researched anything down the religious line at all (well, I did do the early ones to prevent wfyabta). I switched to HR at the same time as Bureau to save a turn. I forgot when I actually learned the tech but I think I was fairly close to CS at the time. Certainly past Currency. Possibly I might have switched earlier but it seemed wasteful. You must have self-searched it though. Did you?

When we have a tech advantage like that through sheer raw research power, additional GPs do not help much. Instead, focusing on hammers on the later stage and take over the world.Good point.

You must have self-searched it though. Did you?


Yes, my capital was hitting the happy cap so quickly, so I self-researched Monarchy early. As a result, my capital got to grow and working more cottages early and did not spend much time stalling under happy cap.

IIRC, I switched to HR + OR (relation + production boost) on the same turn.

Everyone can finish this game at their pace. I'll try to post the IMC III thread tonight or tomorrow, independent of whether people have finished this or not. As has been said, it's a pretty obvious win.

Hi :),

I found some time to finish this...


I vassalized every AIs but Darius and got a domination in 1730 AD...

I started by Cathy:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0422-1.jpg

Then Sury:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0424-1.jpg

then Bismarck:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0425-1.jpg

then Lincoln:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0426-1.jpg

then Wang Kong

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0427-1.jpg

I reach domination while at war with Darius.
I used mainly cannons, cuirrasiers, and cavs for the job... with artis and infantrys in the end.

A couple of screenies:

Power at 1730:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0431.jpg

GNP:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0429.jpg

Production:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0430.jpg

Demographics:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo58/RRRaskolnikov/Civ4ScreenShot0432.jpg

As I hadn't time for a detailed report, I let a set of saves at the end of each war if people are interested...

Thanks Carl for this game...
Cheers,

Raskolnikov

Immortal Cookbook III (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=301811) is now up and running.

Cool, I think I'll give that a go. I really enjoyed this Cookbook and learnt a lot from it. Especially from BigCivFan and Abegweit