Hello everybody, it's time to present the 17th installment of the Noble's Club series!

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/tokuhead0000.jpg

One of the game's biggest one-trick ponies, Toku is all military and no economy. Unless, of course, you count having more cities as economy. The UU is fairly strong if you get there in time, the UB is not that strong in my opinion but hey, at least you're guaranteed to have full advantage if you get infantry. Not that you'll need the help with the game's best gunpowder troops.

And the start:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/4000bctokustart0000.jpg

Paying homage to former Noble's Club host Bleys, I've changed the colors of some civs in this game. Don't worry, even if things look different, they're the same leaders, guys. I didn't make any super AIs or even paste an arbitrary screwed civ into a weak production island! This time, anyway.

And here is the standard cut and paste of our Club Doctrine, courtesy of when Bleys was hosting the series and relentlessly vultured:

There are no hard and fast rules here, fun and learning are our primary goals, but we do request that you update your progress at various points in the game, using the Spoiler feature of the boards.

Tentative posting updates are suggested at:

4000 BC (starting thoughts, no spoiler required for that discussion)
1000 BC or so (how you decided to progress up the early tech/build paths, which AIs you have met, etc)
500 AD or so (after establishing some cities and a possible plan of action)
1200 AD or so (mid-game, Lib race, wars or peace, or whichever happened or didnt, met other continent if applicable, etc)
1600 AD (or when you have decided on a course of action and a specific victory condition)
End of game (Victory!!! or defeat, no shame in losing, especially if you tried a higher level. Learning is what we focus on, not fastest win or biggest empire)

Remember, these are only guidelines. What we really want are your thoughts as the game goes on, so if your strats don't fall into line with those dates, feel free to adjust your reports accordingly.

We also welcome players to ask for specific game advice, as we have a number or stronger players who lurk and help out with solid tips, and of course, we help each other. Replies to specific questions should also be in spoilers, with a simple "@" in front of the person the answer is directed towards.

Special Thanks go to Bleys, who really made this series a great one, r_rolo, mapmaker extraordinaire, for his maps for most of the series (and the one I learned from!), and all of you for playing.

The WB-save is attached (zipped, they are bigger than standard saves). To play, simply download and unzip it into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, and load your favorite MOD (if you use one, if not, I suggest checking out the BUG or HoF Mods), select "Play Scenario", and look for "NC XVII". This allows you to play with your favorite Mod at the Level and Speed of your choice. From Quick-Warlord to Marathon-Prince, all are welcome! We stuck with the name "Nobles Club" because it has a cool ring to it.

Also, it should be noted that although this is a "pre-Monarch" oriented series, you are welcome to play it at levels above Prince. However, the AIs will NOT get their full set of bonus techs (unless your host gets too creative). The main difference is Archery, which the AI normally gets for free at Monarch and above. The main effects of this are in the AIs starting units (warriors instead of archers) and it also creates a tad "slower" AI, since they now have to tech archery themselves.

In addition, because of the variations of using the Scenario menu, your starting Scout/Warrior may not be in exactly the same spot as the one shown (I learned how to correct this, but accidentally did it like the older games. Next NC, your starting units will be in their EXACT spot shown in the screen shot ;)).

Starting zip file:

197005

TMIT Map tip:

Flood plains. And Toku starts with the pre-reqs for pottery. Don't say I'm not being kind.

Also, here's hoping everyone "reflects" on this map a bit.

My first post :crazyeye:

Just wanted to say thanks for putting these on as they've helped me play at Noble much more comfortably. Guess I'll get down to playing it.

I was going to edit my post, but i thought it would be better to put it in a new one for my report. Here it is, and hopefully it isn't too dodgy as it's my first.

I'm playing on Noble, Normal btw.

Got verrrrry lucky with early hut pops, received pottery and writing for free in the first 3-4 moves. Quite lucky i'm sure you'll agree. I also decided to settle 1S as I felt that Kyoto would be a powerhouse early production capital, so having an extra hill wouldn't hurt. Lucked out in this regard as I then had marble in my BFC.

Early exploits:
Freddy. He strikes me as a loyal guy, not someone to declare at pleased.
http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/7894/civ4screenshot0000wm7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

My actual tech was
Mining -> BW -> Ag -> Masonry -> AH -> Hunt -> Med -> Priest (I love the Oracle and Marble sort of made the decision for me) -> Arch -> IW -> Poly.
Free Writing and Pottery helped and probably were the reason for
http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1015/civ4screenshot0006wd5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Also got metal from the Oracle.

Did a bit of exploring, quite a good starting area. Also introduced myself to
http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/5255/civ4screenshot0002qc1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
He founded buddhism, which is fine by me. Signed OB with both, in the hope of having buddhism spread, more on this hopefully later.

Founded Osaka. Quite nice, good amounts of food and FP for a high population gold town.
http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/4959/civ4screenshot0005mh1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Tokyo. Not a great location, but i wanted to block some expansion from the Byzantines and snare those 3 dye. Basically just pumping out early culture buildings to hold the culture at bay.
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/5136/civ4screenshot0007wk7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

At 1000bc I was going ok. Putting out some archers for defence, decided to settle a new city 1E of my worker in this picture (if someone could tell me how to make a point on the map I would be very grateful).
http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/2519/civ4screenshot0009la3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Looks like the germans want to expand north, while the Byzantines want the west.
http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/973/civ4screenshot0010ao3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

My 5th city I plan to use to steal the gold and iron that is just outside the byzantines borders. If this dosen't work there might be issues.
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/444/civ4screenshot0011qd0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

So at the moment my grand plan is something like this. Hopefully I have buddhism spread in my towns, may or may not convert we'll see. If I can grab the iron I will beeline for construction and do a sword + cat attack to the south. Hopefully snare the buddhist holy city in the process and eliminate a rival. Freddy has always proven to be a good ally in my previous games so I plan to bribe him to keep his borders closed to the byzantines, don't want them getty all lovey before I DOW.

As a note, it seems the pictures that I uploaded are a shade too big :confused:
What size do you guys upload them?

Might have to give this one a go on Prince, Normal. As for the starting position;

1S looks like the winner there. A bit odd with a mountain in the BFC but oh well. Here's hoping for no volcano event.

My next report, up to 500AD.

Sadly things started off going a little bit pear shaped. That is far too much of a bribe imo, so that aint going to happen (In hindsight I should have done it)
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/2929/civ4screenshot0014xt7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

My grand plan for my new city is one turn too late, and I have to settle in a bad position to ensure that I can eventually reach the iron.
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/6531/civ4screenshot0015zb1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I now know that the byzantines have 2 sources of iron, and both are quite close to the edge of their borders. Time to pillage to ensure he dosen't get many spears up (no copper either). Sadly no DOW picture, noob mistake I know :eek:
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/4158/civ4screenshot0018th5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Took me awhile, but eventually I get some cat's down and sack the iron town. HoHoHo now i have a machine....I mean iron :D:D:D. I was able to pillage most of his resources, so he is stuck with archers for defence.
http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/4224/civ4screenshot0020hl6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

State of the world. Freddy is coming along nicely, although I copped -1 for declaring on his friend he is still pleased. Have enough of a tech lead that I can bribe him to stay at pleased.
I should be able to destroy the byzantines fairly easily, with iron now available I can take the capital and use my saved prophet for the buddhist shrine (gogo oracle).

I wasn't all that pleased with this round, with no access to either metal it was a slow battle for iron.

Plans for next round
1) Wipe out the byzies. Take capital and most western cities.
2) Keep freddy penned in to the west, eventually I think samurai's + trebuchets will fix his wagon.
3) Take the entire island and move from there.

I am not happy that I don't have a GP farm. My capital is producing 5gp and most likely will give me another prophet, anything i'm missing that could fix this?

I gave this a quick play through to get myself started - up to 2080, Prince, Normal. Not an often Prince player.


Settled one south to get the marble in my BFC. Despite the mountain, this could be a good bureaucracy capital with the floodplains, oasis and some good hammers, especially later on when Steam Power comes online. Start scouting and popped two huts for gold, one with my warrior, the other with my cultural borders.

3720, I meet Justinian, whose blue color borders are very close to mine. Veerrry close.

I tech ag and then pottery while building a worker. Cottages are going to come online fast so I can tech to the goods of killin'. Buddhism is founded the same turn I meet Justinian but he doesn't adopt it so its not him.

3440 I pop Mysticism from a hut. Well then, sure, I'll go chase the Oracle if that's what you want.

3360 and I meet Ready Freddy.

3280 Hinduism is FIADL. Justinian converts. Thank you, Justinian. I also see I am near the northern tundra. Great, one less direction I need to cover early.

3120 Mining comes in so it is off to Bronze Working. My worker is busy cottaging up the flood plains which I work for growth (both of the city and the cottages.)

2720 Bronze Working is done and I revolt to Slavery. No copper yet. Huff.

2480 my mine/chop finishes as I whip 2 pop into a granary. The overflow goes into a Settler. I've started in on AH after Masonry and then its off to the races for the Oracle.

2120 And AH comes in, horses to the north in an interesting position that might make a good early military pump. Also some horses to the east near the shore (but no fish tiles, yuck.)

2080 I stop here and ask for advice. I have a settler fresh with a warrior escort and this is what I see. No copper and a chariot rush at this point would be... risky.

So this is what I have for the dotmap. Not the best city sites to claim horses. Green could be a great commerce city, despite the overlap. Orange could probably move 1 SW depending on what's uner the fog there.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x219/jaaboo/Toku-NC-2080-DotMap.jpg

Thoughts?

My next report, Up to 1240AD.

My war with Justin ploughed along according to plan, swords came out pretty fast and I headed straight for his capital.
This guy helped out alot :goodjob:
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/2474/civ4screenshot0021zi3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Constantinople fell pretty easily, having no axes for defence made it much easier. And I was able to complete my plan with the buddhist shrine
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/4519/civ4screenshot0022yj9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Freddy was kind enough to trade me for Aesthetics, and I was finally able to put in some plantations
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/5198/civ4screenshot0023ka9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

My hard fought war yielded me Antioch, which promptly flipped to Freddy. I am definately razing that one out of spite :nuke:
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/6186/civ4screenshot0024ye6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I took justin's western-most city, and being the first to research Music used my great artist for a culture bomb. That one had better not flip!
http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/6512/civ4screenshot0025sk2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Over-payed for theology, but since I'm razing a few cities I have a bit of spare cash.
http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/4288/civ4screenshot0026vm5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

And finally, in 1240 I was able to wipe out the smelly Byzantine
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/6953/civ4screenshot0027ym1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

So now I am happily sharing an island with my buddhist friend Freddy. I pretty much have the east, he the west. Sadly he has longbowman and looks like he may have maceman soon.

I'll probably stop playing here for today so I can ask for advice on my current empire and future plans. My borders with Freddy look like so
Southern
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/2025/civ4screenshot0028gm8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Northern
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/9172/civ4screenshot0029vl2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Also freddy captured a barb city so has a junk town furthern north. So I may have to settle one more city to the north and close borders with Freddy. I don't want him expanding anymore.

Because I realised that Justin would fall pretty easily, I made sure I stockpiled espionage points against Freddy so I should be able to support a city revolt for an easy capture. My plan is to blitzkreig Antioch (ironic I know) and raze it. Cologne looks like a decent town so I will hope to take it and regroup from their. I will also have to fortify my north-western borders as I could easily be counter-attacked from there.

Any tips or comments would be very welcome as I feel that if I can dispatch Freddy quickly any mode of victory is still on the table.

Emperor, Normal
Well, I see no way to make jump to Immortal. so decided to move up speed wise. Maybe Moving difficulty up and speed back, will help.

Anyway guys in Immortal cookbook seem to be obsessed with normal speed.

Since it is new speed for me having lite version will definetely help.

I popped Pottery in 3820 from hut. After some scouting (and gold from rest of huts and a free scout) I decided to make something like horizontal block line in floodplain zone.

Tech path was very unuasual for me.
Well Pottery (hut)/Agriculture/ Mining/BW (no copper and both my opponent do not speak about axes, huh TMIT did what? WBuilded all copper out?)

Since having Noble WB save means having more or less Noble barbs I went for IW. and claimed iron with third city. (Three settles vs one worker was gamble too.)
Then it went Mysticism/Mediattion/Priesthood/Writing
In middle of writing i decided to tech Masonry.
Also dropped in hunting somewhere to claim ivory.

1120BC dropped Oracle in Tokyo which is city near Fred's - claiming iron/jungled rice. Funny part i can't decide on a free tech.

MC is nice, but i guess i will go to war before forges. Taking Maths is very war oriented. Add construction and HBR and i can kill my opponents. Although they will soon be blocked for good. And my production cities are... not online yet. Tokyo will serve as will western block city which is not founded yet.
Although swordmen rush is possible, i just do not see a point in it. (and given game speed...)
Since byzantine got a stonehenge i will let the build shrine for me:lol:

Monarchy is good but with ivory and gems (no city for them yet) and hindu spreading to me it is... Not so hot at least.

Funny option is taking Aesth, then teching relatively cheap Literature and chopping out very early Great Library (with marble:p). Which will probably let me fly away in tech.

I can grab Code of laws as i teched writing same turn as Oracle is coming, but i better leave this for other guys. Although this could give me early CS which is very nice.

Basically i think game is in a bag.

Welcome to CFC, Dhc5 :cheers:

Checking in. Will most likely be playing at Prince but probably won't start until sometime next week.

4000 BC - Starting thoughts

Moving 1S and setlle looks like the best move. Marble in the BFC, 3 grassland riverside hills and 3 floodplains makes a decent capital.

For tech-path: Pottery - Mining - BW
Builds: worker - warrior - worker (1 chop) - settler (2 chops).

The first worker will build 3 cottages on the flood plains before chopping. Grow to size 3 while building warrior. Teching Pottery before Agri seems a bit odd though.

I like Toku. One of the best UU of the game, if you ask me.
Still playing the Fred LHC game, so I'm going to start this one later or tomorrow.

And thanks for this new installment. Noble's Club and LHC are my favorite series.

Never played Toku, guess it's a good excuse to go conquest crazy.

Mon/Normal
To 1AD
Settled in place, looks like a strong Bury capital. I've not played Togw before but from what i've read here
he is a little lame. Therefore we need a strong capital to finance our conquests. :) First tech will be pottery then Ag.
Warrior first to help pop the huts and have an explore. worker next.

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/TokuA0000.jpg

3320bc I meet freddie (in a stylish lime green outfit this season!), 2 turns before i locate Lincon's border. Turns out to be everyones favourite neighbour Justin.
I pop 3 huts for 46,40 gold and AHus.

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/ToguB0000.jpg

Research Mys then Min. 1st city to block Just and collect dyes, lame placement but provides easy access to his capital later on.
City 2 will initally produce, then cottaged.

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/TokuC0000.jpg

Need to expand so i went Sett-erk-sett-oracle.

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/ToguD0000.jpg

2 turns away from Mon, had i delayed the Oracale I could have taken Fued for free. Wasted oppertunity.
Take CoL, once Mon is in I change my civics, i need some vertical expansion, exploit all these FP and cottages.

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/ToguE0000.jpg

Sliver pops in capital, freddie has settle near my 3rd site, i'll have to move it one north. Justian has settled the other iron anf freddie has Axes threatening the
barb city. looks like no iron or copper for us.

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/ToguF0001.jpg

Freddie takes barb iron city.

Fortunaly i find iron. need to expand, only 4 cities at 1ad. Settler enroute for Iron. Construction is 1 turn, so plan is swords and cats
and a visit to Constantnople. I'll take the buddist shrine.
http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/ToguG0000.jpg

http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo214/KingMorgan1/ToguH0000.jpg

Hey all -

I'll chip in and play this one too.

Welcom Dhc5 - Like you I was a true noble player when I gave some of these games a go. Last one I played on was XIII Alexander. I don't know how you're finding it so far (can't read your posts yet as I don't want to spoil it :lol:) but I found that just the added "pressure" of posting what I was doing made me think a lot harder and I actually had a reasonably easier time winning than I had done previously!

I did pick up some good mid-game strategy from one of the other guys posting as he won out in like 1500 AD or so. Hopefully some of the more advanced players will join in and show you what they're doing - that really helped me.

I've been busy doing other things (such as building this computer) and I've just loaded CIV on it this morning. Probably ought to play a game or two before giving this a go, but ahhhh... what the *&%^*( It's just a game. My strategy's prob a little rusty, and I haven't played as Tok in a long time but here we go anyway... BANZAI!

To 1AD. Having fun in full mode

State property of Japan

http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg

As you might see this time i went for cultural war:) Although i prefer to do wars with bunch of axes...

Did major wonderspam:
Tokyo
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0001.jpg

Kyoto:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0001.jpg

Also dropped Statue of Zeus near Justinian border. Well, i wanted that jungle rice:lol:

Honestly i seriously like building wonders on normal speed. Seems to be that cheap:lol:

Techwise i got Aesthetics from Oracle, teched Poly+Literature. Math+Currency (was seriously delaying code of laws hoping it goes to other continent).

Bulbed MC with GM from Temple of Arthemis (built that first time ever:eek:)

Since my neighbours refuse teching alphabet and we will sonn fall into hindu lovefest. I basically play LHC with two extra dorks.
As long as these do not declare on me things will go nice.

I was worried about my tech rate, but demo says i am into place number two. Add Parthenon+GL and soon coming NE...

Have not seen anything fancy like cats or longbows, so i should be doing fine compared to my neighbours.

I definetely need either mono+CS or Alphabet for backfill. I could use AH to check if i have any horses for example. (Actually i think since Confu was founded in Germany i probably should have gone for Alpha instead of CoL).

Main fact: I am having fun. Have not built that amount of wonders since my days on prince. (Which reminds me i need to check setting just to ensure I am not accidently playing on Noble.)

My next round, up to 1635

My imminent war with Freddy made me want some more happy faces, so thanks to a great engineer i had left over I decided to pop
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/2268/civ4screenshot0030co8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

This time I remembered the DoW picture :lol:
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/9852/civ4screenshot0032xu0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

My revolt worked in antioch, but I was unable to raze it. I take it this is because it was once mine? Sadly it's not a great town and I will need to defend it.
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/7675/civ4screenshot0033no9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Found out who my other rivals are
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/6439/civ4screenshot0034up3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/9365/civ4screenshot0038kg6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/8358/civ4screenshot0041lv0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/5692/civ4screenshot0045pi4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I guess the only important one is Pericles, as he actually managed to vassle Asoka. Victoria seems my way into their continent for a Domination win. Also Freddy was nice enough to build me the wonder that allows all religion civics in Berlin, so when that falls Free Religion should make almost the entire continent close to friendly with me.

While I was able to snatch 2 cities from Freddy and raze a troublesome one I was slightly worried when I saw this.
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/1668/civ4screenshot0037aq8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Knights against my larger samurai based offence caused me to lose my southern stack and set back my attack for decades :(. Luckily my new found allies were happy to trade me the knowledge of the scary war beasts.

Victoria came to me and made a demand which I promptly refused, seems that I will have another war to fight after this one. However I was able to make good progress against Freddy who now really only has 2 good cities left.
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/5769/civ4screenshot0047cj0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/5605/civ4screenshot0052ur2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)


Other things of importance;
1) Victoria is pretty much a non-issue at this point. She is isolated on her continent and I might be able to bribe the Japanese to keep her busy for the time being.
2) Freddy has actually gone and settled to the north and will have actually saved me some time when I eventually get round to snapping them up.
3) The big threat comes from Pericles. Because he has vassaled Asoka it makes it difficult for me to win by domination or space race. Asoka has a large tech lead and if left alone could run away.

Viccy's lands. Only 5 cities
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/2458/civ4screenshot0053es0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
I feel like at the moment I always fall back to a space race win on Noble because I don't have the guts to go for a dom or conquest win. Hopefully not to do that this time.

Getting interesting thats for sure :p

OK folks, count me in for this one - be a nice break from the Noble/Epic struggle I'm working on right now.

Noble/Normal.

4000 BC

No screenshot really needed for my initial thoughts...

Settle 1S for the rice and marble, get a worker up, get cottages online, and start to explore.

Tech: Pottery, Agri, Mining, BW...

Worker, Warrior, Worker (unless I see a desperate need for really rapid settler)...

-> 725BC



Settled 1S and checked tech/build times. Pottery and Agri coincides with first worker pop – result!

Exploration pops huts giving me… Pottery and Agri (each after one or two turns of teching them) – should’ve gone mining/BW I guess ;) Still, with time to spare before :) becomes a big issue, I sneak Writing in ahead of Mining

Also warrior made it to Woodie II thanks to another hut, and a quick rumble in the jungle.

3320BC – meet Freddie, in his lovely day-glo green, on the west coast

3200BC – Justinian is just south – there are three dye tiles separating our borders, I suspect I might be tainted by his religious inclinations pretty soon!

2880BC – Classic Literature quest – can’t see me going after that one, somehow

2640BC – BW teched, slavery adopted – no sign of Bronze near me :( , or Justinian :)

2480BC – Circled around north – some silver, deer, and a lot of tundra… not much else. Hinduism FIADL. 3 cottages built, rice farmed, and second worker on way to quarry the marble next turn when Masonry completes – a half decent infrastructure, and a library on the build order nice and early.

Teched: Pottery (Hut) Agri (Hut) Writing, Mining, BW, Masonry… torn between AH (horses?) and IW (swords/axes) next. No other use for AH yet, so go the IW route

Result… as long as I get a settler out pretty soon. Here’s the lay of the land, Western city looks like a lock. Iron/Corn/Ellies/Wine and more floodplains. Eastern city is more of a blocking exercise, if I can get that in then I can shut up shop and backfill once I’ve taken the fight south.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e226/solomod/Civ%20Noble/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg

Settler whipped/chopped, and overflow gave me a quick finish on the library – followed by a couple of warriors. Meanwhile AH teched, and horses are on my north boundary, and around my proposed eastern city spot – I definitely want to cut off that northern band of land asap.

1560BC – Osaka founded at City 2 site – not without a heart in mouth moment as panthers try to jump the escort. Great Wall BIAFAL

1200BC – Alphabet teched, go for Aesthetics, just because I rarely do, and start cottaging Osaka whilst waiting for the border to pop.

725BC – Barbs start invading boundaries – settler rapidly chopped from Osaka and heading for eastern spot. Aesthetics in, Mathematics on the tech tree. Once Osaka expands to hook the iron up I’ll look at a sword/axe force to explore (and conquer) the south, but for now power rating doesn’t look like it’ll land me in any trouble.

So far no really clear thoughts on direction, once I’ve seen more of the south I’ll have a better idea, but first I want to lock off the central band to allow me space to backfill later without opposition.

My next round up to 1810. Probably playing a bit fast, but I like to keep chugging through games.

This round went a bit smoother and left me in a much nicer place

Started off with Berlin going bye bye
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/3258/civ4screenshot0054ir1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/84/civ4screenshot0055cy5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

A series of trades followed and with Berlin captured allowed me to change my civics quite significantly. Some of my gold farms now have decent production :D
http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/9652/civ4screenshot0057rp0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/4531/civ4screenshot0059un7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/2096/civ4screenshot0060xd9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Was quite happy with that round of trades. Only a couple of techs behind now.

Obligatory Freddy dying pics (he actually fought quite well).
http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/8441/civ4screenshot0062wl3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

So now Freddy is done, time to turn my attention to the new world and Viccy. She's only got 5 cities, but I am very worried that when I take them they will be swallowed by Asoka and Percy's culture. Might have to think of a new strategy.
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/6349/civ4screenshot0064cr4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Demographics look good as do diplomacy.
http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/3123/civ4screenshot0065yp3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/9660/civ4screenshot0066zw3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I'm thinking that I might be able to win a diplomatic victory, although it will be hard with the combo of Asoka and Percy voting against me. And what is the deal with the highest population? How can someone have that pop with 1/3 my land? Am I right to assume that the Vassal will automatically vote for his master regardless of whether you have a greater relationship with him? Trying to work out a way to drive a wedge between Asoka and Lizzy, don't want that -1 for declaring on a friend.

I think that I should have been nearly able to win at this point of the game, but I am not a good warmonger and it's taken me far too long to safeguard my continent. Teching for infantry and artillery for a quick destruction of lizzy.

Hi

Noble, Marathon, played up to 1195 AD.

Ok I take a look at start and consult with Toku and the advisory council and after sobbing a bit when we see a peak right in middle of bfc we drop one south to get marble and free up xtra hill for mining. Ag is first on tech list then set citizen on hill top make warrior first. WHile city is doing that existing warrior pops a goody hut and we get ag from it. So ok coolies we switch to pottery and warrior moves down to another hut and pops a map.

Now NORMALLY I think maps only SLIGHTLY less sucky than getting a bunch of angry barbs. However once in awhile getting map shows something interesting...

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/mappop.jpg

Guess Justininain should have stuck with his old color since it is MUCH harder to see than bright blue :P. Well since I am pretty sure constaniople is derived from ancient greek word meaning "warrior rush me please" And since my second warrior already done thanks to working the treed hill..

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/takeconst.jpg

And justinianan learns hard way why taking 30 turns to build a warrior on marathon can come back to bite ya sometimes :P He seemed pretty bitter bout since his cap gets razed automatically without even asking if I wanna keep it.

By this time we see freddy trying to look like monty. His scout seemed to come from west so I figure we head out that way and see whats up. Freddy DOES have a warrior by time we get there but it's two on one so it worth a shot and turns out I didnt even need the second one since first one wins and we even get to keep Berlin.

After pottery is done I tech to BW while scouting out island. It looks like NC game has turned into LHC game. I go for masonry next since I dont have archery or ah yet and as you can see...

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/nocop.jpg

South pretty much the same. NO flippin copper on the WHOLE flippin island. So getting GW set up before the barbies start getting frisky moves to top of to do list.

And just to rub it in ...

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/rubitin.jpg

Gee, yay, nice event, IF you have copper :P

But as you can see from screenie we did get GW done so we dont have to worry much about the barbies coming in asking ppl whats in their wallet.

Since our neighbors didnt want to play anymore rest of BC's and most of AD to this point just building and expanding and doing some wonderwhoring.

I manage to get CoL first so we have a religon and all other religion end up getting founded on elsewhere which is nice cuz by time we meet other ppl they all pretty much have diff religion.

Asok built AP but since NOBODY shares his religion I am hoping it wont be a big deal.

World gets circumnavigated by us first so at this point plan is to make move for lib while filling out the rest of continent.

Here is what empire looks like at this point:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/empire.jpg

Demographics:
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/demos.jpg

I just need to up my power a lil bit but otherwise things seem to be peachy.

tech sitch:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/techsitch.jpg

Okies being thre turns away from lib at this point in game I am thinking unless one of the AI's does some SERIOUS bulbing I should win lib race :P

I will take astronomy to get galleons then it off to figt a war since it been a few thousand years and Toku gets grumpy if doesnt kill something every now and then.

Just not sure who to pick. Asok has AP and that COULD be a pain if lots of other cities have hinduisim even if it not their state religion. So maybe just go and raze it first then decide on what to do next.

Vic conditions look like this:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/viccon.jpg

Seems simple--take over Peri and win game. Although Peri IS the one AI out powering me atm so I will have to a lil mil build up first before making move on him. But I am hoping that wont be too hard.
Anyways thats it at this point. It looks like I have nice shot at winning unless I screw up BIG time. So wish me luck :)

Kaytie

>800AD, and the question of whether to war or not...



Freddie wants Writing, and is offering Sailing. I’ll want it one day, but not yet. Mysticism and Archery is my preferred deal – and goes through whilst I look at trying a cheeky mega-chop for the Mids in Kyoto. Probably left it late, but I’m ready to take a chance.

475BC – Mids built elsewhere… well I’ll get a little gold anyway! Buddhism spreads to Kyoto – I’ll take it for now (keeps Justinian happy) – on the down side, Barb axes on the horizon!

300BC Freddie converts – looks like a love-in of the tubby Buddha fellow on our continent.

50BC – not quite going to plan. Barbs are non-stop and Osaka hasn’t popped the Iron spot yet – luckily archery has allowed a solid defence, but I need to get on the counterattack asap! Having teched drama, I’m pumping a couple of points into Culture slider to try and speed things up. Meanwhile Justin has built another city right on my borders, and has Axes/Swords in it – hopefully I can keep him sweet until I’ve got more!

Borders popped so the continent is pretty much cut off to Justin/Freddie. OB closed with both of them, and traded Aesthetics to Justin for Medi/Poly/Sail to make sure he doesn’t take offence

800AD – back on track. Nicomedia has culture slipped to Japanese control and my swrod/axe/ellie/cat force is building slowly. Now I pause for a question. Keep building for attack and hit my neighbours, or keep them sweet while I backfill the north and get well ahead on tech? I’m sure that I can build a force to take them down, but I’m thinking that my tech lead will allow me a greater advantage a little further down the line.

Playing on Prince/Epic



Pretty vanilla start so far. Started with Warrior/Settler/Warrior then some settlers, barracks, monuments...

Techs were Mining/Hunting/BW/Agr/IW and then pretty much beeline towards construction (with a detour for pottery for cottages).

3800 Met Frederick
3675 Met Justinian the Profit Prophet - oh ahahahaha - good one

Didn't found a religion, have built no wonders. A couple of libraries going up now.

3 cities, all connected and connected to Iron. (Needed to find this since no Copper in the neighbourhood which was probably the major development in the first stage, but luckily iron was within 2nd cities borders already.) Settler is enroute up north to settle silver/deer/horses site for the extra +1 happy - rarely is a silver site worth settling this early

Basically have just rapidly expanded/chopping (have not needed to whip yet) to get best 4 city sites at which point now I'll get those 4 cities up and running to max happy cap while I get to construction/horseback riding asap for cats and war elephants. Don't think I'll build any more cities, just military and take out Justinian with swords/cats/elephants as soon as I can do it.

Justin is the target because 1) he's the biggest threat to win - not so worried about fred, 2) he's closest, 3) he's founded a religion which I'd like to grab

http://i347.photobucket.com/albums/p459/gcm4738/tok1000bc0000.jpg

BLEH. Fail. Wiped out by Barbarians. I need to get horses and/or metals online faster, axemen came and wiped out two of my cities and I quit in disgust. :/

Yay some time to play civ today and this looks like a fun one to try out, thanks to all who put these assorted games out there from those of us who play them and often don't have time to report. I'll hopefully finish this one today and do a 1/2 decent report.

Monarch/Epic/1000BC


Settled 1S and noticed I don't have a single non forested hill so I go for the dreaded Toku cottage rush! Tech Agri/Pottery to start and start cottaging the floodplains.

Managed to get 4 huts with just my warrior! A map showing the barren north (and yummy rare silver) about 100 gold and hunting (with ivory nearby!)

I meet Freddy and Justisine and decide to REX south quickly, annoyingly every single scouter I send out dies horribly so my map is pretty bad and is limiting my planning. No copper in sight but plenty of iron, horses and happy metals.

My world at 950 BC, immediate plans are to actually explore the rest of the land that I assume is a continent as I have only met the 2 civs and peacefully REX my land. I assume there will be some sort of Samurai smashing Germany too.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g98/cinder123454/1bctoku0000.jpg

Emperor/Epic

4000 BC: Starting thoughts (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7544775&postcount=10)
4000 BC - 2025 BC

After a small test run on Monarch to check my build calculations, I started my first game on Emperor level (Emperor-light to be precise). Anybody knows if Emperor-light has less barbarians than Emperor?


I started the game as planned in my starting thoughts. I calculated that I would finish BW at the same time my capital would grow to size 3, but when I started with Pottery, this happened with the 2nd hut:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0065-1.jpg

I also got a positive event for the oasis:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0066-1.jpg

After Pottery-Mining-BW I proceeded with Myst-Masonry-Polytheism (prereq for Literature)-Priesthood-Writing-Agriculture

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0067-1.jpg

I'm one turn before completing the Oracle, but I'm not sure what to take as free tech. MC for forges would be ok, because there is gems/silver/gold close by, but with wine and ivory it's not that essential. I'm leaning towards Aesthetics to get the Great Library really early.

After the Oracle I'll probably chop another settler (maybe warrior first and grow to size 4) to settle near the gems. I'll tech IW next, but maybe Hunting-Archery is needed first to get some defenses up.

Barbs are as frequent on each difficulty in scenario files as they should be.

However, unlike the AIs on scenario maps, I can't directly mess with the barb techs in the text WB file. This means that barbs will have warriors only at first, like lower levels. They'll attain other techs more rapidly and they'll be far more frequent, but this boils down to them being easier. Short of going into the WB (in game!) yourself and adding archery to the barb side, I don't know how you'd get around this.

I just noticed the difference with barbs on emperor when I lost my capital in 800 BC to invading barbarian axeman! Time to resign... :(

Oh well, I guess I'll restart from my last report and build more units instead of buildings.

Honestly then i saw first barb non warior it was spear:)

And that was very late.

Emperor, normal to 1040AD

choosed to stop as i need to do some actual work:D

First city i've got from my buddies:)
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0000-1.jpg
Well, raised it although i could use some fish for healt. Besides in 1040AD barb cituy with dear, crabs and silver (3resources i do not have) still is barbarian. Well, had no time for it.

I switch tech to alpha immediately
look at situation:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0001-1.jpg
Not bad for old Tokugawa.

Did some trading:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0002-1.jpg
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0003.jpg

And switched to organized hereditary rules.

200AD bulbed Philo (should have been Academy, which happened at 400AD)

Aproximately that time (400+)one of idiots handed me construction while my axe got to lv4 (at <60%odds:mischief:). Which lead to heroic epic in Tokyo and catapult build up.

820 I declared on justinian. I was not well prepared, but... He was one turn away from xbow and i had stack prepared to pillage iron (later it appeared he had second source, my poor scouting). And even more important he moved to caste on that turn. Well, i could use some time without whipped defenders.

880AD I hit cash pot with market already in:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0008.jpg

900AD adrianopole falls to pure strength of samurai. No siege. One casualty. Well, Fred did good job of not trading feudalism to neither me, nor justinian:)

920AD:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0010.jpg
Dresden does last favor to me.

And Justinian calls that defense?:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0011.jpg

1040AD Byzantines are cleared:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0012.jpg

I am 6 turns away from libralism (more or less). Most of samurai are injured and picked few promos as they are healed i am pretty sure Fred is next. The only question is should i move my secondary production city Kagoshima to wordbuilding already. I could use university of sankore and Taj after i take Nationalism from Liberalism.

Given how unpure my GP farm is I had incredible streak of GS. On other hand i could have used some Golden Age before war...
Oh, and in two turns i will have no GS person. If that is GE i might rush something like Notre-Dam, otherwise it will be first GA with Taj to follow.

Overall, not bad so far. Although i fear doing intercontinental nonsense on this speed.

1000AD report

I'm wishing I did this on Emperor as I'm steamrolling it on Monarch :sad: I expected Toku to be much more of a challenge then it has been, Samurai are just fantastic!

Finished filling out my land just in time to build Samurai and with such fertile land the AI doesn't even have longbows yet! A few more years and Justin will be done, the German 3 city empire will fall shortly after. I did learn not to go to war without drama as WW nearly crippled me until I teched it off.

Taking capitols is always worthy of a screenshot!
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g98/cinder123454/Constantinoplefalling0000.jpg

Goodies!

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g98/cinder123454/Goodies10000.jpg
State of the world @1000 AD, a 2nd continent is very close!

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g98/cinder123454/NorthToku0000.jpg
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g98/cinder123454/SouthToku0000.jpg

When my continent is mine I'll see what %s I'm at for the win and decide what route to go from there.

Hi

Noble, Marathon, 1654 AD


Okies I get lib race won and pick and astronomy for freebie tech. But THEN I get a scare. I am building a few filler cities and one of em gets hinduism the AP tech. And do I EVEN have to say that next turn spawns a AP diplo vote? grrrrr. I say a word Im not allowed to print here and cross my fingers and hit end turn.

I get lucky tho. Only candidate is Asok who votes for himself but EVERYBODY else abstains.

So My plan is to burn AP city to ground ASAP. I start building some galleons and then gather up the few swords I made to capture some barbie cities and upgrade em to samuri.

I start making a cpl of xtra units, a cpl of muskets and some trebs.

I am not in slavery at this point. I have pretty mcuh been in caste whole game and I dont feel like going into anarchy for like 4 or 5 turns so I just have my best hammer cities build as fast as they can.

It still takes longer than I like but I finally get a stack and send em off to go raze deli. Asok is a vassal to peri so I have to DoW on him too but it cant be helped and I figure I will make it up to him later.

Since I was kinda rushing the stack whose sole purpose is to capture and raze one city it is kind of on smallish side. So sure enough after my sami's and muskets take their turns there is STILL a cpl defenders left so I have to wait another turn grr. And of course THIS turn there is a vote. I say a few more words I cant print here as kind of preview to words I will be saying if I end up losing to an AP vote ONE turn before razing the AP city.

But I get lucky again:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/apvote.jpg

And after lil sigh of relief my guys solve the AP problem the Toku way :)

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/apgone.jpg

So AP all taken care of but still lil matter of being at war with peri and his vassel Asok. Now peri is being a lil snot about the whole deal and is still refusing to talk. But relief from escaping a cheap ap diplo loss has me in good mood and I am feeling magnimous. I decide I will just go and raze one of peri cities and then let him have peace :).

Istead of moving over land I reload my stack on the galeons and sail em all the way to other side of my continent. My thinking Peri's cities to my east are closer so are more dangerous and the trip over will give my untis time to heal.

A few truns later my stack arrives at destination and unloads and PROMPTLY dies :(. I wish I could say they put up one heck of a fight but really it was a slaughter. AT FIRST it looked like it was gonna be no problem. Peri attacks first with two chariots...yeah you heard me I said CHARIOTS for crying out loud. They dont even scratch my musket. But then he attacks with two cats. They not only hurt my muskets but rest of stack as well. Then it is Knight after Knight. And NONE of theknights lose a battle not ONE. So I watch asthe knights kill my muskets and ALL my samuri :(.

Only upside was NOW Peri rdy to talk and he will take peace. Only now since his power is way up over me he expects ME to pay him. I am big enough to admit that i DID DoW peri first when he really didnt do anything to deserve it, it was his stupid vassal asok that was causing all the trbl. And I am still in semi good mood for dodging AP loss so I let peri have his lil moment and pay him 250 gold for peace.

Now I WAS willing to let the matter drop at that point. But noooooo peri has to be a lil snot. As SOON as peace timer is over he comes by demanding more gold, then he demand I convert to buddhism, then he demand I give him a resource THEN he demand I give him astronomy.

He really didnt have to try that hard. If he want to move to top of AI to be killed list mission was accomplished when he made his FIRST demand grrr.

So I start teching my way to things like rifles, and cav, and cannon and grenadiers, and frigates and SoL's. Even events seem to want to make up for the axeman event event when I couldnt make axemen>

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/cannonevent.jpg

Meanwhile during build up Peri wasnt JUST spending all his time trying to convince me to kill him. He techs up to grenadier then he makes a move on Big Country. At some point Vicky gets involved too and by time it over Peri has vassalized his whole contient.

So now it down to two team race. The united Toku empire vs Peri and his lackeys.

I get my new and imporved stack made, dDoW on Peri and his lapdogs and drop em off by city where samuri had their last stand:
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/betterstack.jpg

And thats where game is at this point. Plan is to raze cities until AL is finished being teched. Upgrade as much of stack to Infantry as possible. Then start taking cities until I get a dom win.

If peri is lucky I MIGHT give him option to cap but he BETTER take it the FIRST time I check to see if if I can offer it. Cuz he will NOT get a second chance at mercy. He has REALLY been frying my cheese this game grrrr.

Anywho hear is how things look at this point.

My Empire:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/empire1654.jpg

Power:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/power1654.jpg

You can see wher emy power took nosedive after losing all my samuri and how peri went waaay ahead for a lil bit. He should have just kept quiet and enjoyed his lil lead instead of trying to make demand after demand. Cuz his doing that mean I really have no choice but to whomp him grrrr.

Tech sitch:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/techsitch1654.jpg

Beeling to AL--well beline with a side trip to dem to get stature of of lib-meant letting peri get ahaed down the sci meth path but hopefully I will catch up soon after I get AL done.

demos:
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/demo1654.jpg

Leading in the important categories at least. Sheesh you'd THINK being ahead in gnp and pop and land and power would make ppl like me more. I havent even been running slavery. There is just NO pleasing some ppl :P

So thats game at this point. Now that AP been taking care of I dont think game will last much longer once Toku powered infantry get going. That plan at least :)
Kaytie

Emperor/Epic

4000 BC: Starting thoughts (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7544775&postcount=10)
4000 BC - 2025 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7545276&postcount=24)
2025 BC - 500 BC


I took Aesthetics from the Oracle, grew to size 4 on the same turn and started on another settler. I settled to the east, but decided to settle on the river, instead of 1 tile further east.

This is what happened in my first try when suddenly barb axemen came from the north:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0071-1.jpg

In my second try I somehow was warrior-rushed when 4 warriors took on Tokyo:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0072-1.jpg

In my third try, there was hardly any barb activity and I even took an axeman north-west to raze a barb city.

I teched IW-Hunting-AH-Literature-Monarchy, hooked up the resources and used all of my remaining forests around the capital for chopping and in 500 BC I completed another marble wonder:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0073-1.jpg

I didn't do very well in blocking off the 2 opponents, so I settled in the north (mostly for the deer) and I'm 1 turn away from taking a barb city in the north-east:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0077.jpg

I have build some barracks and need to focus on building some more units to not get too far behind on the power scale. My 2 wing-cities also need libraries to get good value out of all those high commerce tiles (cottages, gems, etc.)

Noble/Normal. Yes, I'm playing it at noble.

500 AD

Settled 1S. I teched AG, then pottery, then toward bronze, and with no bronze we go archers. SPAM rex. If you want an idea how I played, well look at DaveMCW's cottage guide. Basically, I farmed out an early GS and lazily slapped an academy in the capitol, then just went between hammers or cottages depending on the city. I REX'd like hell though. Whipped worker/settlers (some chops too) and really blocked the AIs badly since the expand pretty slow on this level. No war by 500 AD, so here's the land:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/500west0000.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/500west0000.jpg

And I scouted the AIs too.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/500ailands0000.jpg

197092

1200 AD

More nonsense expansion. I basically ignored the AIs since fred is docile and i was in justinian's religion. Justinian found his own enemy though:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1020justdowsfred0000.jpg

I want to own this entire land eventually and I do have sammies so I prep for war.

And go.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1150dowfred0000.jpg

This is one of the last times I'd bother to bombard, fred for some reason moved his stack to me despite his fighting with just.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1200adcapturedcity0000.jpg

197093

End (1888 AD)

Really gayness in this segment. I was angry and I'll explain later. Fred died easily:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1300justandfredpeace0000.jpg

Lib for Nationalism pretty late

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1320lib0000.jpg

Germany gone.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1420fredgone0000.jpg

And I turn on my Ally.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1500dowjust0000.jpg

OK, now for the first thing that makes this segment stupid:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1555idiot0000.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/idiotpower0000.jpg

Now, of course I had no intention of letting him vassal to me. But...seriously! How is he doing fine here?! He's not as strong as other AIs, he's weaker than me, and he's getting his head handed to him. That's FINE? But then I've long pointed out how stupid fireaxis set the vassal mechanics to be.

Doesn't matter. I had other plans anyway:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1600justiniangone0000.jpg

After this I went zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I was in FR and anybody that could have DoW'd me liked me. Some wars on the other continent between vicky/asoka and China. I dow'd for diplo, and ran vicky and asoka's favorite civics while I teched.

I built the UN VERY early in the 1800's. Oh no. This wasn't good enough. See, Vicky didn't want to vote for me. She voted for pericles. Close borders, different religions...nope nope nope. They're "friendly" at +7 due to hidden modifier gayness (I lost an LHC this way once to THREE AIs having hidden modifier SECKS with the guy who built the UN, it was terrible). After vicky gets out of the war, she VOLUNTARILY VASSALS TO PERICLES, but not me, who's stronger.

THEN, after all that, CHINA VOTES FOR PERICLES. Um.......can I call bull!@#$ yet? I think so. China and vicky are annoyed. Qin is just pleased toward pericles. No way in hell do they average to +9!

Getting tired of the flawed diplo and vassal mechanics that really hurt a good game, I use my ridiculous tech power (sushi, lots of cities, etc etc.) to just take a few cities for pop.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1878dowchina0000.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/NC%20XVII%20Toku/1888UN0000.jpg

You crappy, cheating, garbage AIs can lose anyway. Scrubs.

Love the colors T! I really must set my own files up more like these. I actually quit a game the other day as Churchill because I had Justy, Fred, Louis, Washington, Sal and Mehmed all as opponents. Terrible color contrasts. It seems every time I get Hammi in a game, Qin is right next to him. Or Ramesses, then Charley. Or SB and GK. I swear I had a game where every AI was a different shade of blue!

Set the next PYL up like this too, with good contrast! Works wonders IMHO.

I wont have time to do any reports til after Christmas, but playing this one at my usual Emp/Epic.

First thoughts through 1500 BC:
Looks like an easy continent to conquer. Toku really must be played at a higher war-monger level than many leaders. His economics suck, other than that which he can take by the sword. Justy has already founded 2 religions and built the Great Wall for me! Very kind of him indeed. They will be mine by 1 AD, heh. Might let Fred live a bit, hes a wussy.

I was so involved with Byzantian, that missed Fred declaring on me. Or was it Justinian vassalizing last turn...

Maybe waiting while he settles great general was not that smart.

I went into second war even more unprepared. Even managed to loose exbyzantian city to some sneaky xbows. Which i retook immediately.

Chitzen Itza +CG xbows is making bloody bath. It is AD1160 and german's have still three cities including Berlin. Luckily there is no more active iron. Next turn they will loose copper (Fred popped it for me:)) and horses. Samurai against longbows...

Got my liberalism and other continent seems not be to advanced.

I bought their map, just to check:

Well, no copper. Good work:goodjob:, TMIT.

Had enough warring, will leave that for my next work day.

I was so involved with Byzantian, that missed Fred declaring on me. Or was it Justinian vassalizing last turn...

Maybe waiting while he settles great general was not that smart.

I went into second war even more unprepared. Even managed to loose exbyzantian city to some sneaky xbows. Which i retook immediately.

Chitzen Itza +CG xbows is making bloody bath. It is AD1160 and german's have still three cities including Berlin. Luckily there is no more active iron. Next turn they will loose copper (Fred popped it for me:)) and horses. Samurai against longbows...

Got my liberalism and other continent seems not be to advanced.

I bought their map, just to check:

Well, no copper. Good work:goodjob:, TMIT.

Had enough warring, will leave that for my next work day.


Actually, I noticed after playing that there isn't copper anywhere on the map, to my knowledge, unless someone pops it

You mean it is non edited map, without copper? Never saw such a thing, but...

You mean it is non edited map, without copper? Never saw such a thing, but...

It's not exactly a typical script, look carefully and you might guess!

Hello

Thanks for the game TMIT.

Prince, HOF mod, all standard settings
I settled 1S to grab hammers from the stone since no FP where lost;

Researched AG, Pottery, Mining, BW, AH, IW, Masonry (I think.)

Built worker, warrior, worker, settler, warrior, settler, warrior, settler, warrior worker, ... (I think.)


197103

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=197102&stc=1&d=1229207511

Request for comments on my game. Am I playing too much as a builder? With what units should I wage the first war?

Been waiting for the new one to start. Could use some help, as I haven't been able to win on Noble yet. I am quite strong until the Industrial era, and then seem to get shafted, and just fall farther down the score chart.

Wish me luck:)

How do you folks get the images to be full sized within the spoilers?
(Mine are thumbnails?)

BC175



I built some chariots until iron was hooked up and settled a city the for gems.

197107

197106




AD500


Finally hooked up iron to build axes & swords. Captured the NW city from barbs & built the silver city. Built GL and another marble wonder. Researched construction, calendar, monarchy, et al

197168

197169




AD1250



Lol, well I still haven't DOW.
Toku has the world's most advanced civ.
Circumnavigated first. Built Parthenon.
I suppose I'll have to start a war since space race with Toku would no doubt be held against me. :)




197181

197182






AD1650



I finally went to war. I know it's bad to wait this long; especially with Toku.
Germany is gone. Oh well, I'll be late winning. Versaille is almost done.


197228


197229

Thought I'd give this one a go - first one of these I've played in a while. Not played Tokugawa before either, and not sure I was looking forward to the challenge.

Monarch/Normal - to 850AD:

Initial thoughts were that settling 1S was the choice. I couldn't see the marble in-game, but remembered it was there from the screenshot. Mightily glad I did too - for early production and commerce, settling 1S was definitely the way to go.

The usual meet and greets took place:

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/871/civ4screenshot0004ef2.jpg

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/4433/civ4screenshot0005bi5.jpg

...well, get you with your fancy new name.

Tech path went a very unusual Agriculture/Pottery/Mining (popped)/Bronze Working. In fact, the second improvement I built was a cottage, after the mine. Very, very unusual in fact.

Anyway, those two cottages I built stood me in very good stead, racing me through the early part of the tech tree. In fact, my early research was so good that I was able to tech Masonry then Iron Working after finding no copper, and still being safe from the barbs.

Tech after that went Myst/AH/Poly/Priest for the Oracle - a barb city popped up in a somewhat awkward spot:

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/252/civ4screenshot0006ye5.jpg

Went Hunting/Archery for short-term barb defence (it was cheap enough), then Writing for Libraries and open borders - when this happened:

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/6655/civ4screenshot0008vm8.jpg

Yaaaaaay! CR1 for all swords if I build 8 of them. I wasted no time:

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/1215/civ4screenshot0011pv4.jpg

Well, alright, a little bit of time. This wasn't until 275BC.

In the meantime, I built the Oracle and took...

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/231/civ4screenshot0009pu1.jpg

...now, I'm not gonna lie, this wasn't the original plan. Originally I thought I would take Metal Casting. However, with Justin inexplicably not founding a religion, Confucianism would be the only religion on the island - potentially putting me in a very powerful position. In an amusing piece of role reversal:

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/5846/civ4screenshot0010yh0.jpg

It was becoming apparent that Freddy would be my target - he was lagging quite a long way behind. I wanted to shrine my holy city, so I waited impatiently for a Great Prophet to do so. 4 turns away I added scientists to speed it up, and lo and behold:

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7715/civ4screenshot0012hr8.jpg

ARGH! What?!?! This set me back quite a lot. Just goes to show...never trust 92% odds, kids. He academied the capital.

Hey Freddy! How are you doing?

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/5338/civ4screenshot0014hn1.jpg

Really? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/7913/civ4screenshot0015ux8.jpg

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/9850/civ4screenshot0016ud9.jpg

...and that's just about all she wrote so far. Freddy is wiped out completely, I forgot to take a screenie of the last conquest. Tech is lagging, I doubt I'll be first to liberalism. Consolidation phase required before maybe knocking Justin off the continent, we'll have to see. I need about 4 million more workers, that's for sure. I took CS, so am in Bureaucracy now, but definitely have some catching up to do.

North:
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/9419/civ4screenshot0018yz9.jpg

South:
http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/8114/civ4screenshot0019ge2.jpg

And graphs vs Justin:
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/7938/civ4screenshot0020jl4.jpg

Next segment won't be for a while, as I'm off to Italy for a couple of weeks...but this one's been fun so far.

TMIT, thanks a lot for the map... :goodjob:

Monarch, Normal to 775BC



Settled in place, went Worker, Warrior, Worker, Settler to start off and popped a total of 6 huts for 154g, a scout and a few hostile warriors which killed one of my warrior. One of my other scouts died to a panther while defending in a forest. The odds are kind of small.

Regardless, quite a distance into the game, I met him:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0001-20.jpg

Like this guy; don't think I ever had problems with him. I managed to explore quite a bit before my warrior and scout died:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0002-28.jpg

There was no copper around (I suspected that knowing TMIT :D since he wasn't gonna make a rush easy; I went AH and found Horses 3N 1W of Osaka where the 3rd border pop would claim them ~2000BC).

Then I met Justinian:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0003-21.jpg

Seeing that he was kind of close and thus a good target for a chariot rush, I switched to Slavery after founding Osaka:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0005-21.jpg

950BC, my 10 chariots were amassed at his borders through slaving/chopping/building and ready to come in:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0006-23.jpg

His defenses weren't great:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0007-21.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0008-19.jpg

I razed this one cuz it was size one:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0009-26.jpg

But I captured this:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0011-21.jpg

Justinian is dead and I have a Hindu holy city.

Empire with and without resources:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0013-19.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/dankok8/Civ4ScreenShot0014-23.jpg

Plan:
1) Spread Hinduism to Fred and befriend him for a bit while I REX.
2) REX the continent.
3) Kill Fred once I get Samurai.

Hey, I've been reading some these games and am wondering why Fred is green? He's always light grey in my games.

Hey, I've been reading some these games and am wondering why Fred is green? He's always light grey in my games.

Using the world builder scenario save and any basic word processing software, you can change the map quite a bit...

Been waiting for the new one to start. Could use some help, as I haven't been able to win on Noble yet. I am quite strong until the Industrial era, and then seem to get shafted, and just fall farther down the score chart.

Wish me luck:)

My advice would be to play to the first checkpoint then compare how you did to others with reports in, if you feel you are far behind what they did restart and try and do more in the same time. You often learn more by replaying then starting fresh in my experience. When you are happy with your game at the 1000BC checkpoint save and do the same for the next 2, I expect it will help you a ton.

That's why I play games like this, it gives you a great measuring stick to see where you are lacking compared to some very good players.

Prince/Epic
This time around I will try to post a report

TMIT

What's with the Profit Profit? :)

TMIT

What's with the Profit Profit? :)

No no...you're mistaken. It's "prophet profit". This is a product of my own personal RGD -----> Random Garbage Generator. I just come up with arbitrary nonsense. There is then a check against my judgment stat (which varies on modifiers such as sleep, amount of work done recently, intoxication, or working out). If that check fails, the RGD idea makes it into reality.

There's a slight bit of relevance to this one: Justinian tends to found a religion, and that shrine is usually good for $$$. Hence, with a prophet, you get profit. Once you kill him. Make no mistake though, I thought of "prophet profit" BEFORE realizing that it had some actual meaning. Then I just left it in.

In other words, I was screwing around.

I typed out a long and detailed last report, but sadly it got eaten when I entered a wrong password.

So heres my more brief report up to 2002.

Very frustrating, Wiped out the English easily enough but the Chinese capitulated to the Greeks and ruined any chance I had of a diplo victory.
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/8191/civ4screenshot0013ie6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Simply couldn't get the votes, so after a very long and pointless war it led to
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/1721/civ4screenshot0016mj6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/3377/civ4screenshot0018ej2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/1193/civ4screenshot0020sy4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Really frustrating that I had to have an inter-continental war to force a domination win. Made the mistake of not fully supporting the chinese which may have won me the votes or a vassal.

One thing i'd like to ask, if an AI has a vassal do they automatically get voted for? Because I'm sure in some of my games I've had a vassal that did not vote for me. Pretty annoying.

I didn't have a GP farm this game, which was pretty stupid. Should have wrapped this up much earlier, but oh well.

Thanks very much for the map and letting me be involved in this one, was very enjoyable.

> 1400AD Noble/Normal



I decided to get to work early on the opposition – having visions of Freddie ducking under Justinian’s wing if I let them get to the point where they could vassal. I certainly didn’t have the forces to take on Justin yet, but Freddie was clearly stuck expanding up the western coast.

There was a moment of early amusement when I hit Fred’s nearest cities and opted to raze one – Justin had a settler and chariot trying to sneak through the open gap and they were half way there when the borders popped back out and pinged him back from whence he came :high5:

Samurai online as I looked to consolidate and push to Berlin

1400 AD – Freddie destroyed and Justin just about enclosed within my lands – gotta love those Samurai. Time to rebuild the economy and get the infrastructure sorted out.

Justin seems pleased enough, I expect that I can co-exist with him whilst I head overseas to open up trade routes – at that point I’m thinking I can hit him from three sides and take over the continent and make a final decision between space or an overseas war.

Of course, any input/critique welcome.

Screen(s)

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e226/solomod/Civ%20Noble/Civ4ScreenShot0000-1.jpg


http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e226/solomod/Civ%20Noble/Civ4ScreenShot0002-1.jpg

@ Fierabas - or anyone else that wants to discuss overall early strategy :crazyeye:

responses/criticism encouraged :lol:



You asked for some thoughts on your strategy... Here's what I think which kind of applies generally to some of the other players as well. You're playing Emperor too I think - and I'm only on Prince, and I haven't played beyond 1000 BC yet and I've tried not to read reports from others that have... so with that - here's my thoughts...

Playing as Tok means war - that's his advantage (Agg/Pro) - and winning CIV is all about building an advantage and leveraging it. So if there was any doubt about that in your mind forget it! Everything should be about who's going to get it in the neck next and how/when you're going to do it. Therefore barbs should rarely be a problem because the goal is to have a military advantage from the get-go. What do we all find out pretty early...

We've got Justy and Fred as neighbors and probably share a continent with only them since we don't run into anyone else. Who is our target? I go for any Civ that's either Fin or Agg since they tend to be the biggest threats. In this case I just know from Civ playing that Justy's going to be a bigger threat than Fred - he's gotta go. His UU comes online about the same time as ours, it looks like he's got better land, he seems to play more aggressively than Fred, he founds an early religion - so he's the victim.

We don't have any copper - so no axe rush. Not for me anyway. :lol: I saw someone - Dankok8? - go for the chariot rush. Interesting. This gets Justy out early, but his cities won't have much to capture and he'll be racing to backfill in the open land with Fred now. I'm going for a more measured approach - cats/swords/elephants. The advantage of this is that he'll have more worth capturing (shrines, wonders) and I'll have a leg up on settling the rest of the continent. Downside? It will cost me a lot more in terms of time to prep, cost to prep and time to wage. Plus horses and iron are plentiful so I don't anticipate having a major advantage in terms of tech - will have to overwhelm him with numbers more than mil tech advantage. He'll have 6-7 cities by then - I'll only have 4. Also Fred and he will likely be buddies by then and so relations will be soured and I might have to war on two fronts in the worst case :sad: if Fred goes Psycho on me.

We have enough food (including the floodplains), enough happy resources, horses and iron to do this. I think the marble is a red herring. I may build some marble wonders later, but I'm not going to take time on the Oracle that could be spent on troops. As for cottages/floodplains - definitely - but not as a priority over military.

So that's my thinking so far. No open borders for me. No wonders. Nothing extraneous that will keep me from building my army. In the past I probably would have tuned up by taking the barb city on the NE coast before doing Justy, but I don't think I'm going to do that here.

I'll report later today to let you know how it went :lol:

Part 1, to 70 AD.
Prince, epic:




Looks like a fun map, with lots of different possible strategies. I was looking for an early warmongering game to get back on track after the LHC defeat. But the lack of copper crippled my planned early rush on Prophet Profit. No problem anyway, with a lot of land to settle. And I think mr. Profit is developing a nice holy city down there. I think war will wait until samurais/elephants. I was tempted to try a sword rush, but opted for a peaceful expansion. So the goal of this segment was to seal the big northern region of the continent. And I think I've accomplished it quite well.

Oh, I decided to completely ignore wonder buildings. I think the quality of the land doesn't require any specific wonder to get a strong position. And Toku the caveman doesn't like wonders anyway :lol: .


Tech path: agri - pottery - mining - BW - hunting - AH - IW - myst - archery - HBR - writing - alphabet - mathematics - currency - monarchy (just started)

4000 - Kyoto founded 1S to get an extra hill

3975 - 51 gold from a hut

3875 - map from a hut

3575 - 81 gold from the last hut

3500 - First AI, in a stilish bright green:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0000-4.jpg

3325 - Prophet Profit? Hopefully he didn't have any brain surgery and is our good old predictable Justi, sporting a nice blue outfit.

2775 - No copper in sight. Oh well, mr. Profit will live and improve that nice holy city.

2475 - Osaka, good potential for a super-commerce city:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0001-3.jpg

1675 - Tokyo. Forgot the screen. It's 1E from the jumbos and will be a nice production site.

1300 - Satsuma. Claims iron and will block the northern region. Could have settled 1E on the grass hills to work the wine, but it's not a great tile anyway and this position claims less desert and an extra hill. Will be another production city:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0002-3.jpg

1125 - Buddhism spread to me and I convert. This will secure us from any trouble by the Prophet.

675 - Kagoshima. Claims horses and definitely seals the northern region. Not sure about the future of this city. And I think I'm going to settle a little city between Kyoto and Kagoshima, to work those floodplains:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0003-3.jpg

470 - Barb city razed. It was in a totally wrong spot:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0004-3.jpg

275 - Another barb city auto-razed. Actually I wanted to keep this one:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0005-3.jpg

65 AD - Last barb city razed:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0006-3.jpg


Techs:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0007-3.jpg

Glance:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0008-2.jpg

The empire:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0009-4.jpg

Norhern ice, completely blocked. Ignore the iron city sign. It will go further north and I will settle an extra city to work the flood plains. I think between the 2 grassland hills, 3W from the coastal corn:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0010-2.jpg


Not sure about the plan now. I'm already building units for mr. Profit, but I'm not sure if I should settle the north first or declare war. If I expand north I will need to delay the invasion to build courthouses. But I don't think they are going to cause any trouble, so I probably can safely wait for a late medieval war.

I've played many of them, but here comes my first half-witted attempt at a write up.

Prince/Epic (yes I wussed out. In retrospect, I should have tried my first monarch game.)

Domination 1794
Forgot to take screen shots until it was over. Settled 1S, started out with a worker, warrior, settler I believe. I hate barbs so I picked up the Great Wall rather quick. Plus, getting a Great Spy settled early USUALLY allows me to be very lazy about espionage until much later. As luck would have it this game, I never got a great spy!

Settled the corn/wine/fps to the left of capital as scientist farm. Figured I'd really need them this game. Otherwise, cottages all the way. I never been a big fan of the oracle because of the tech path, but my last couple of offline games I built it. So I did in my GP Farm and took metal casting to get me that much close to samurai.

Meanwhile, I prepared the swords, axes, and cats to go get my Profit/prophet/oh to hell with homonyms I wanted those shrines! Justinian didn't put up too much of a struggle. I took 3 cities and sued for peace. Waited the minimum turns and then wiped him out. Fred stayed ahead of me in tech pretty much the whole time. Funny thing though, no one teched feudalism for a long time. I actually abused swords more than samurai this game.

Once I consolidated the former Byzantine empire, I prepared for a war with grens and cannons vs. Fred. I win Lib pretty late, sometime in 1300s. I don't even have optics so I take Printing Press to boost my economy (I think nationalism was available and worth more beakers but I was churning out good, experienced units anyhow thanks to settled generals.

Fred beats me to steel :mad: Didn't matter though, my productions was way more than his, and he fell rather easy. Woohoo so many wonders.

Now it's decision time. Space or more war? Well that's a no brainer, this is Toku! I realized I was about 20% land away from dom and China was WAY backward, no gunpowder yet and now I had rifles as well as grens and cannons.

So I loaded up the galleons and took out the Chinese quick. Here's more :mad: I was still about 6% short on land, and this was with me pumping the cultural slider at 70% to grab as much land as possible. Thank goodness Asoka was there. Quick, easy capitulation put me over the top.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=197170&stc=1&d=1229263379

I had fun with this one. Not too many frustrating moments. Right before I wiped out the Chinese, an AP vote came up for the win and I abstained not realizing I was the one up for it. Domination is better anyhow :king:

1585 AD

OK I could use some advice here...



Did my best to straighten things out whilst (1) German cities assimilated themselves into the Japanese empire and (2) I picked up a couple of spots up north.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e226/solomod/Civ%20Noble/Civ4ScreenShot0003-1.jpg

I've also made contact with the outside world, in the shape of 'Big Country' (Wang Kon) and Asoka - hopefully that will open up some trade routes soon, and some tech trading.

Here's my issue though, I'm really struggling to get my cashflow back online. I'm gearing up to try and hit Justinian with a two or three pronged attack, I should have some decent stacks of siege/ellie/samurai with which to take him down, but tech continues to struggle in the meantime.

As ever my cities are probably not focussed enough, but with almsot constant warring I find it difficult to get out of the habit of getting some degree of production going everywhere.

If anyone has the urge, please take a look at the save file and see if there are any glaring horrible cities in there - don't be worried about upsetting me, you won't!

report to 505 AD



The game has gone pretty much to plan so far. Key events:

600 BC - Oracle built/Conf FIADL - I check city screen - someone on another continent is wonder hogging big time! I end up destroying barb city on NE coast with one axe and then settle near it later to get corn/iron (2nd source because first is vulnerable to Fred) and hills - and to cover N part of continent.

Fred has built behind me on NW coast - I really hate this. He will be hard to manage if he flips out when I eventually attack Justy. This would probably be the end for me if it happens, so I'm bulking up with more defenders than I would usually leave behind. My army's near attack strength.

I did change my mind on two things. Opened borders to Justy to get Bhuddism and scout him and I built the Stat of Zeus in my W production city. Needed the culture to ensure that Freddy didn't take away iron/hills, wanted the mil advantage, and since it was half price with ivory I chopped it. Got a Great Sci at 475 AD and built academy with him. So all in all the game is pretty much according to plan.

Nippon's got 5 cities and there really aren't anymore good places to build now so war is inevitable anyway. Nearly ready to jump on Justy. As predicted Justy and Fred are buddies which is a fairly big risk to me at the moment. I will DoW Justy in the next 10-20 turns and go for Constantinople - followed by trying to move east and take as much as I can. If Fred DoW's me, I may be toast.

As predicted I don't really have a tech advantage or resource advantage. I'll have to go to war on numbers alone. Really though the way this game is looking I have no choice but to expand through war. My real opponent is whoever is wonder hogging on another continent I think.

Let the mayhem begin!

http://i347.photobucket.com/albums/p459/gcm4738/tok505ad.jpg

@gcm4738

Thanks for the comments! I noticed we have the exact same early cities placement (apart from Kyoto, why did you settle 1SW instead of 1S?). Below is a point by point evaluation of the early game.


This game might not have been the ideal one to make the jump from Monarch to Emperor, but apart from several retries after losing against barbs, I think I'm doing ok.

- Traits

Agg/Protective is an odd combo. In my mind it's not really a good warmongering combo (like Agg/Organized for instance) until Gunpowder. It still forces a warlike game, because building units make the most use of these traits.

- Religion

Byzantium is supposed to found at least one religion, but it didn't happen in my game, so there's no prophet to profit from. Justy did build some wonders and has good land, so I agree he's the prime target as Frederick is the weaker of the 2.

- Wonders

The marble is indeed a bit distractive. I needed Mysticism for border-pops and Masonry to get better production in Kyoto and being that close to Priesthood, I couldn't resist the Oracle even when I should have. Taking Aesthetics and going for the early Great Library is something I haven't done before. It might be a good long-term strategy, but it cost me a lot of production, which I could have used for civil/military units. In my game Justy has build the Great Wall btw (including around his spearpoint city Adrianapole), which led to more barbs from the southeast.

- Expansion

Instead of settling 2 great spots horizontally, it might have been better to settle 4 decent spots, like others did (Soriana, TMIT). I'm somehow wary of settling in jungle before IW (as in the Shaka game) and on this level the AI settles more aggressively towards me.

- Stack composition

Swords/cats/elephants would have been good, but then Mathematics from Oracle would have been better. In my game I'm too late for any early war approach. I'm going for Samurai/cats, because the Great Library will me the tech lead to get Samurai before Justy gets Feudalism (I hope).

As for the barb city in the northeast (same location in my game), I kept it as it will have good production from the hills and my 5 cities will be enough to build a Samurai army.

I did take Open Borders to get some trade routes. I don't see a reason for keeping borders closed unless you're playing a blocking strategy.

Part II, 70 AD - 1415 AD. Prince, epic:



For some reason all my shared games are very messy. This one isn't bad as the last LHC, but I'm not happy so far. And I wonder why I steamroll pretty much every SP game, but suck so bad in the forum games. Oh well.
Declared war vs Justi in this round, going decently so far.

Tech path: monarchy - CoL - Calendar - Machinery - CS - Paper - Engineering (researching).

Pretty obvious from the tech path, but I declared vs Just without pikes. And I soon realized that elephants suddenly don't look so scary vs cataphracts. Smart move, eh.

Anyway:

285 - Switch to HE.

310 - Event with Fred. I don't want him bribed by the Prophet when I declare, so option n.3:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0011-3.jpg

550 - Health event. I don't like it this late, but still option n.3:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0012-3.jpg

640 - Fred has some cash:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0013-3.jpg

685 - Nara:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0014-3.jpg

835 - Nagoya:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0015-3.jpg

1330 - After millennia of refusal by my side, the AP forces OB. AP is buddhist, so OB with Fred and the Prophet.

1340 - The next AI find us with a caravel:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0016-3.jpg

1350 - Freddie's world is round.

1355 - Finally ready to declare war (or not):

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0017-3.jpg

1365 - Nicaea captured:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0018-3.jpg

1400 - AP vote to stop the war vs Justi fails. I didn't defy, but my votes are enough.

1415 - Antioch is captured. My stack is pretty much destroyed, so I get some cash for peace:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0019-3.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0021-3.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0020-3.jpg


Empire at this point:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0022-3.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0023-3.jpg

Prophet's land. Notice Costantinople's huge culture:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0024-3.jpg

The continent:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0025-3.jpg

Pathetic tech situation:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0026-3.jpg

And glance:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0027-3.jpg


Medieval war vs Justi without engineering was probably the most stupid thing to do. I'm going to quickly deficit-research it, build 10 or so trebs, 4-5 pikes for stack defense and declare again, this time to finish him. Production in the main cities will be focused on units until this war is over. I think I'm going to tank my economy in the process, so Fred will be left alone until rifles.

Bad news, Justi still doesn't have the buddhist holy shrine in Costantinople. But he has the Angkor Wat there, so hopefully it will pop a Great Prophet.

I'm going full out Toku-style and ignore Liberalism.

Emperor/Epic

4000 BC: Starting thoughts (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7544775&postcount=10)
4000 BC - 2025 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7545276&postcount=24)
2025 BC - 500 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7546111&postcount=30)
500 BC - 670 AD


After Monarchy I switched to HR pretty soon. Both Frederick and Justinian were getting pretty strong, so I teched Mathematics-Construction-Horseback Riding first to build war elephants and cats. With the help of the Great Library I was teching fast, so I went Currency-CoL-CS and MC-Machinery. It wasn't really a direct approach needed for this level and maybe I should have beelined Samurai instead, but I'm in pretty good shape right now.

Frederick expanded along the western coast and I had to build the Parthenon in Osaka to keep up the cultural pressure otherwise I might lose the iron:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0078.jpg

As for GP's: I settled a great prophet and build an academy with a great scientist in Kyoto. The third GP was a great artist, because I built the heroic epic in my capital. I settled in Osaka for some more cultural pressure.

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0081-1.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0082.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0088.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0089.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0090.jpg

When I complete Machinery I will whip at least 10 samurai and take down the science slider to upgrade some axemen. I hope to attack Justinian before he gets Feudalism and will take out his main stack in Adrianople:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0083.jpg

I have just traded Currency for Alphabet with Justinian and Currency + 25 gold for Calendar with Frederick.

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0084-1.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0085-1.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0086.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0087.jpg

From this point onwards I will only focus on war until I have taken the continent. Maybe I should bribe Frederick into war against Justinian as well, otherwise he might attack me in the west.

@flipsix3

Took a look at your save, more workers! you can drop the culture down to 0, build a forge in your capital. I see you're going nationalism probly for drafting, maybe Taj? maybe go PP for your towns. OB with Profit to scout. make some trades with China to backfill. regroup your army stacks to see where you are with Profit, you're 0.7 strength so warring right now isn't a good idea. Build your cities up, let'm grow. good luck

Part III, 1415 - 1720, prince/epic:



Tech path: eng completed - guilds - gunpowder - PP - banking (researching)

Yes, 4 techs. My research is that slow.

1425 - Next AI:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0028-3.jpg

1440 - Mr. Profit pops a Great Prophet and builds the buddhist shrine. Was about time.

1495 - Switch to theocracy.

1530 - Pericles:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0029-3.jpg

1570 - About to DoW again. Let's see those cataphracts now:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0030-3.jpg

1575 - Angora. Started from here because there was a decent stack with free access to my backyard:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0031-3.jpg

1590 - Last AI. Boy, is she ugly:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0032-3.jpg

1600 - Izumo founded. Nice little city claiming deer, crab and silver:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0033-3.jpg

1605 - Prophet Profit is the first to Liberalism. Not going to help you a lot, sorry.

1620 - Costantinople captured. Buddhist shrine will provide 20 gpt when out of revolt:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0034-3.jpg

1680 - Thessalonica:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0035-3.jpg

1704 - Adrianople:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0036-3.jpg

1714 - Nicomedia and bye Mr. Profit:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0037-2.jpg

Tech board is so utterly terrible:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0038-2.jpg

Glance. The Big Country is hated by everyone:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0039-2.jpg

Continent:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0040-2.jpg

And Germany:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0041-2.jpg




A war vs Fred is out of question now. He has grenadiers and probably cannons coming soon. I still have 1.4 power ratio with him, but I don't think samurais, muskets and trebs are going to cut it vs grens and cannons.
I really don't know how he's teching so well, with 6 cities and a lot of desert/plains.

I have a solid empire, but my research is pathetic at this point. Probably I'll keep pumping units with 2 cities to keep a high power ratio and start building multipliers everywhere else. Justi's land needs some reworking, but I captured a bunch of workers in the war.
I'm going to switch to free religion asap, to get rid of some diplo penalties.

So basically the next phase will be heavy economic recovery.

Overall, I think I'm playing Tokugawa as intended: utterly backward warmonger with no wonders :lol:

Hi Fierabras - discussion below..



Why SW instead of S? I can't claim it was because I didn't know what was there because I'm sure I popped a hut beforehand and got a map! Best I can recall is that I was running away from plain brown squares. I traded the browns/marble for the green/FP if I remember, because I knew I wasn't going to need the marble quickly, and I figured on picking it up later. In the end, I don't think it would have been a game changer for me either way.

Traits: agree on the agg/pro combo. Not optimal, it's just that it seems to me that it definitely rules out anything other than war. Guess that's why I never play as Tok.

Religion: That is weird about Justy. I have to admit as I've been doing other things today I've been back and forth a number of times on who to attack. Frederick scares me because I think we're 1-2 in military strength. This could go horribly wrong. But I stick by my original logic in the end. It's not a bad plan. It's success will be heavily dependent on Fred's non-participation though. It's an interesting map. Almost however you play it, you end up with a pie split into thirds...

Wonders: Just my opinion on the Oracle, etc. Justy hasn't built any in my game, so there's not much to take unfortunately. I just decided I was going to be pretty Spartan in my approach to this game. It shows in my score now though, as you get no points for building an army! Plus it is taking a little longer than I'd hoped. I really have to DoW pretty quick.

Expansion: Agree with you here as shows from the similar placement of our cities. I avoid the jungle early on. In this case it did mean giving up territory though. The plan is to take that back when it's already been improved! :lol: If I had to do it over again, I might have more aggressively chopped/whipped another settler to ensure the whole north was blocked off. That probably would have been better in hindsight.

Re borders, barbs and so on. I kind of ended up doing the same thing in the NE after all anyway. I was trying to block the north at the time, but Fred sailed round it *shrug*. As far as open borders, i usually delay unless I've got something significant to gain. Could backfire on me though as maybe Fred will be more likely to attack me now. (Still have closed borders w/him). I agree with you on Feudalism - it's a different game when they've got longbowmen. I like to bring cannon to that fight!

Hi

Noble,Marathon, 1738, dom win.


So at this point I go as planned., razing cities until I get infantry then start taking em. Reaon I waited was cuz I figured leaving a cpl of infantry behind could hold cities better than leaving a cpl of rifles behind, especially since peri has grenadiers.

And I needed to keep my stack together as much as possible. Peri has a TON of units. His counter attacks do damage just from sheer VOLUME of knights and grenadiers and anything else he can send. But I am careful to keep my stack on hills when not in their galleons so I lose a cpl but not too many and I raise three of his ciites.

By time AL is done WW is starting to have a bit of an effect but event fairies are nice and I get this one which helps put a lil bit:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/happyevent.jpg

I had been saving my pennies so I easily upgrade every rifle and grenadier in my attack stack to infantry and now start taking cities. I take Sparta, then Athens and one more before Peri is willing to cap, even offering a city as part of bargain.

I accept and check vic conditions:
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/finviccon.jpg

grrrrr so close but still so far. It looks like I need to attack someone else. I pick big country just cause I have to move troops to garrison shagnhai the city peri gave up as part of his surrender. It is one of BC's old cities and right on his borders so I would be fighting off culture neways. I figure I attack from shanghai as jump off point and just take one or two cities until i get over % limit.

But it turns out I didnt need to attack shanghia does a culture pop on very next turn and:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/winnotice.jpg

Dom win :)

Here is look at final empire:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/finempire.jpg

With factories and shale plants some cities starting to get very sickly but at this point it dont really matter since game is over hehe.

Final demos:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/findemo.jpg

All those numbers boosted by a golden age so they not really as lopsided as it might look like. Reason for GA? well I had a great prophet i was holding just cuz nothing eles really to do with him then a great artist popped and I figured what the heck they wont be really good for nething else :P.

Final Score:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/KaytieKat91/nctoku/finscore.jpg

Not bad score. Probably should have been better iof I had managed my empire better. I got pretty lucky killing everybody on my cont VERY early with warriors so by time I met other AI's I was doing pretty good and while toku can be a pain early once it time for gunpowder units if he has the empire to pump em out the other ai's just gonna get stomped hehe :)

So I did better than I thought. I rpobably would have gotten mushed if I hadnt got the map pop to show me where to hit Justy before he even got started but it happened so oh wells :P. Just very sad no copper in game. Not that I needed but with bat mod all of tokus axes look like ninjas which is soo cool but I didnt get to make any at all :: pouts ::

But I got a win which is always nice so thanks everybody for the map and see y'all next game :)
Kaytie

@gcm4738


The settled spot 1SW is a floodplain, which made me wonder why. I agree it's not really much of a game-breaker, because you gained another floodplain (although shared). Moving away from brown is always a good idea.

"The plan is to take that back when it's already been improved!" Yes, my idea as well. Why waste time on chopping jungle, when the AI can do it for you? There is something to be said for pre-IW jungle sites. I noticed that TMIT (who is a good player) does it a lot, because underneath the jungle there good green grassland waiting to be cottaged.

Opening borders gives you diplo benefits and trade routes (when connected). I mainly open borders when there are trade routes and not before to prevent too much AI activity on and around my land. I guess delaying is good, but not for too long.

Part IV, 1720 - 1892, prince/epic:




Peaceful round of economic recovery and military building.

1732 - Something completely unexpected. I think about it a little and accept. Fred has a small empire, but he's teching well. This move will secure our continent and grant us a few extra resources. And as a vassal, his culture is not going to claim our BFC's. So welcome to Japan, Freddie (too bad there isn't any Roman in the game, or we could have a newborn Axis):

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0042-2.jpg

1770 - Aesthetics stolen from Fred.

1774 - Literature stolen from Fred. Yeah, literature in the '700. But we are Toku, right?

1786 - Switch to Free Religion and Free Speech.

1838 - Switch to Universal Suffrage and Emancipation.

1848 - A few trades with Steel:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0043-2.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0044-2.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0045-2.jpg

1884 - And a Biology trade:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0046-2.jpg


Remember the pathetic tech situation at the end of part III? Looking a bit different now:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0047-2.jpg

Glance:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0048-2.jpg

This is ready for the new world:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0049-2.jpg

China and India:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0050-2.jpg

And victory conditions:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0051-2.jpg




Yes, looks like the Big Country is going for a culture win. He was the target anyway. Backward, disliked by a lot of people and owner of a large chunk of land. His land will put us very close to the domination limit. So a quick vassalization of Asoka or Victoria after him will be enough. I just need to wait for a few more transport. The ocean gap is quite small anyway, so I can cross it in multiple waves.
Pericles is teching quite well, but I'm pulling away on the tech board.

Nothing too fancy to fix the economy in this round. Just a huge amount of :gold: and :science: multipliers, plus a well placed Oxford and Wall Street. And a lot of cottages. No wonders, no great people. As said above, Toku style.

With this huge land lead I could easily win to space, but I want a military victory.

Asoke went into wheoohrn a couple times, but never declared vs everyone. Pretty sure the target would be the Big Country.

edit: oh yes, Asoka settled a junk tundra city in our continent. Just that may be enough for the dom limit, when I'm done with the Big Country.

And final part VI, 1892 - 1943, prince/epic




No-stop war in this round.

1896 - Global warming already, the first of a long serie. No less than 12-15 tiles at the end.

1901 - Last 5 turns of artillery and cash from Asoka for Biology.

1902 - The Big Country still doesn't have rifles. Time to declare war. I decided to attack from land because I didn't have enough transports. And possibly to make Qin suicide some outdated stack in a counter.attack. I get a -1 diplo with Vicky only. Asoka and Pericles don't give a crap about China.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0053.jpg

1903 - A Great Prophet pops out of nowhere. Time for a Golden Age. The land attack looks like a smart move. He suicides an awful lot of units vs my stack and is already willing to capitulate. Without losing a single city :lol: . Sorry fatty, but I want your land.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0054-1.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0055-1.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0056-1.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0057-1.jpg

1904 - Tianjin captured:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0058-1.jpg

1906 - Switch to Police State.

1908 - Shangai captured. A bunch of wonders inside:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0059-1.jpg

1911 - Chengdu capture with a small secondary stack:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0060-1.jpg

1914 - Guangzhou captured.

1917 - Fred is spreading Mining Inc. to some of our cities.

1919 - Bejing captured. Statue of Zeus inside.

1922 - Hangzhou captured.

1927 - Vicky declares war vs China out of the blue. China is down to 1 city at this point.

1927 - Xian captured and the Big Country is no more:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0061-1.jpg

1932 - Still far from the dom limit. So time to declare war vs Asoka. He captures a poorly defended Bejing, but leaves a single cavalry there. I recapture Bejing and capture Hangzhou, wich was totally chocked by Indian culture and donated a few turns earlier:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0062-1.jpg

1933 - Fred captures that India junk tundra city.

1937 - Bombay captured and Asoka capitulates. He's pleased again. Still 3% land to go:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0063.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0064-1.jpg

1938 - Fred gift us that tundra city. I'm ready to DoW on Vicky and capture an almost undefended York in the same turn. But I demanded a totally useless tribute a couple turns ago, so I have to wait. Don't ask me why.

1942 - Amassing tanks on Vicky's border. And an event:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0065.jpg

1943 - A border pop somewhere is enough for dom victory. Vicky's lucky day:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0066-1.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0072.jpg

Demographics:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0067-1.jpg

Graphs:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0068-1.jpg

Score:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0069.jpg

Techs:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0070-1.jpg

Glance:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo282/AiShizuka/Civ4ScreenShot0071-1.jpg


I'm happy with the outcome of this game. Pretty standard early expansion, medieval war with following economy crash, recovery and quick modern war.
Freddie's spontaneous vassalization was totally unexpected and I think it helped a lot. He was still teching well and I managed a couple nice trades.

Pericles was still doing well all on his own, but he couldn't have won to space anyway. My production power was out of his league, and I focused on military at the end.

Not sure about the war vs the Prophet. It was a choice between settling the whole northern region or an early war. I usually avoid war if there is still so much land to settle, and I think I've managed to seal my part of the continent quite well.

The war vs the Prophet was kinda messy, but I've learned a valuable lesson: War vs cataphracts without pikes isn't pretty :lol: . On a more serious note, I need to keep in mind my opponents' UU and avoid the mismatch.


Thanks again for this serie, looking forward for the next one.

@DhC5
you should have nuked the other civs that aint voting for you because thats how you win a diplomatic victory late in the game

One of the game's biggest one-trick ponies, Toku is all military and no economy. Unless, of course, you count having more cities as economy. The UU is fairly strong if you get there in time, the UB is not that strong in my opinion but hey, at least you're guaranteed to have full advantage if you get infantry. Not that you'll need the help with the game's best gunpowder troops.

One thing worth noting is that Toku's UB allows your National Park to build a power plant without Coal so that you get maximum use out of your Factory even in the greenest of cities. Clean Coal isn't a myth in Civ IV the way it is in real life. :)

Prince/Epic
To 1300 AD or around that

Settled 1S
My screenshots got ruined they all look like this
197282
My Warrior popped Hunting,Barbs and Gold from 3 huts
My City popped for Mysti which was on the path to the Oracle
Met Freddy/Justi
Justi did not found any of the early religions but snagged Judaism
I went Min>BW>IW>Agri> dont remember after that my screenies are ruined
Capital built Warrior>warrior>worker>warrior>settler>worker
I got Oracle and chose MC as the free tech
Stole Worker from Fred hes upto Friendly now
I checked in between and Justi was in WHEOOHRN and I had Construction + Ivory so I spammed out Jumbos
He DOW'd and sent two stacks having some crappy units which earned me my first GG whom I combined to make a H3/W3 Unit
After getting CS I got Samurais and I am currently in war with Justi who has nothing compared to my UU
Hes offering 200 gold for peace
I am the tech leader and built the AP but its not going to be for a long time as I am suffering from AP unhappiness :(

Prince/Epic to 1360 AD...



The game has gone according to plan so far. I built up my stack of cats/swords/elephants and DoW'ed Justy in 655 AD, just after he'd built the Bhuddism shrine and after I'd traded him for whatever techs I could get. Wiped him out just after 1000 AD or thereabouts. Fred never joined in and he's friendly now - even though I think he was a little sad to see his pal Justy go.

Met all the other civs... In my game Pericles has vassalized Victoria and Qi Chun King has vassalized Asoka. Funny becuase Vicky and Asoka have built pretty much all the wonders... strange little game this.

Fred has built the Pyramids and Masoleum but that's it. It took me a couple hundred years to get my economy back online. Still finishing off a few courthouses and markets to improve the situation.

I built the Nat Wonder in Kyoto and the Heroic Ep in Osaka - which is my military production city. Have popped 2 GS - used for academies in Kyoto and Osaka. I'm even on tech with Fred and have just teched Bureaucracy (sp? :lol:) and started to churn out samurai. While I'm doing that I'm teching optics to get a couple of caravels out exploring the other continent.

after that it's engineering for pikes/trebs + knights? for war with Fred. Again, I don't think this will be a tech advantage war - just sheer numbers. He hasn't built any military, by the time he does it will be too late.

I have to admit I've thought about leaving Fred alone and working towards invasion of the other continent, but the problem is I'm a little behind in tech with that lot and my UU is ripe *now*. Plus I worry that Fred will do me.

I guess you have to play the map. I suppose most players will do both of these guys in. I chose to do them in the order I did as described in the earlier post. That's still good reasoning I guess, but I wonder what happens afterwards. I will have to likely invade overseas at some point. I just hope grens/rifles/cannon haven't passed me by by the time Fred's cities are incorporated into the Japanese empire!

He's got 8 cities. The north one is halfway to "turning Japanese, I really think so" already. We're up to 12 cities...

http://i347.photobucket.com/albums/p459/gcm4738/tok1360north.jpg
http://i347.photobucket.com/albums/p459/gcm4738/tok1360south.jpg

Well I'm tracking back to the early stages of the game. I had been recovering my economy after wiping Freddie - having suddenly developed a strong tech lead I was confident that I could make a push for the game until Justin decided to DoW on me and promptly spent around 20 turns bouncing off my infantry.

He didn't threaten much, and lost a ton of units (and two cities) but he had massive numbers of lower tech troops that made a huge dent in my time and economy whilst I failed to make a decisive move - preferring to hold him at bay and keep trying to sue for peace. By the time he crumbled I was looking at another rebuild, whilst Pericles raced ahead and was well on his way to a space win.

As this is a learning experience for me, being one of my first Noble efforts, I want to try and correct my early mistakes. So it's back to my 725BC savepoint to try and improve on my early game

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7545063&postcount=17

Emperor, Normal to the glorious end. I meant domination.
1230AD Finally took Berlin:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0000-2.jpg
Well three settled persons and no more chichen Itza. I teched Economics for GM which i unleashed in Dheli to get money to get techs. Don't know maybe i should just teched away.
I got world monopoly on Copper (later popped second source)
Well, remaining Germany did not lasted long.

1380Ad find time for a barb city
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0002-2.jpg

Evaluated my size and options:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0003-1.jpg

Asoka had isolated ex barb city which I planned to attack from china territory:)

Well, being sneaky i traded Liberalism arround so they would not love each other too much.
And...
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0005-1.jpg
Took Bombey with trebs and samurais i shifted while going for rifling. Asoka had few counteatttacking ideas but next turn met mass upgraded rifles:lol:

As fresh stack took barb city he was ready to capitualte. Unluckily Big country decided to vassalize to even bigger Pericles.

Which did not stopped me. (Under my calculation vasalizing england was not enough and i hoped after kickking China enough they break loose.)
Well they did not. Even managed to retake Beijing.

in 1595 Pericles putted together second counterattack attempt. Well, i looked at his stack. At my defenders. Ans at this screen:
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0008-1.jpg

I had three cities in revolt and few borders to pop up in five-six turns.
So despite china being down to one city i called it a day. Most of my cities in end built either culture or wealth. I realy wanted to reach state property:cry:

Couple of turns later England vassalized under Perricles and i got my domination movie.

http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo21/soirana/toku/Civ4ScreenShot0009-1.jpg

Well, took me 9 hours of pure game time including lunch in previous session:lol:. Probably need to learn few things about queque and waypoints to approach TMIT standarts.

In general - I now from past - if i start taking Aesthetics from Oracle and build wonder first (3rd and 4th cities:lol: had them before granaries) - it is time to pick up my gear and move one level up. Damn, few months ago emperor looked so scary...

1140AD Mk II

Advice/input welcome on:

(1) Timing of military action
(2) Leveraging the AP



Well I hoped to try and build a force for an early attack on Justin this time, but I just don't seem to be able to pull off an early army build :(

I did grab the dye spot though, and have poured culture buildings into it whilst placing the same 'blocking' line of three cities. I'm now in a position to start building stacks - but have I left it too late?

Tokyo is going to be a commerce town, Satsuma will be hammer heavy, whilst Kyoto and Osaka both have decent prod, as well as cottaged floodplains.

The other interesting development is that I have built and have control of the AP at this time. I've never had this in my possession before - so any assistance/advice on how best to leverage it would be welcome.

My own thoughts are that I now turn to rapid expansion of my military (upkeep to be funded by commerce from Tokyo). I still think Justin needs to be my first target - and beelining to Samurai seems to be the sensible option.

Thoughts...?

Emperor/Epic

4000 BC: Starting thoughts (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7544775&postcount=10)
4000 BC - 2025 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7545276&postcount=24)
2025 BC - 500 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7546111&postcount=30)
500 BC - 670 AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7548306&postcount=58)
670 AD - 1000 AD


After Machinery was in I started to whip/build samurai. I took my tech slider down to 10% while researching Drama and used the gold for upgrading 4 axemen.

In 850 AD, just before Justinian finished Feudalism I was ready to attack his main forces:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0092.jpg

It took 2 turns to wipe out all his forces in Adrianople, but after that I did not find any opposition the entire war:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0091.jpg

The main target was hardly defended:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0096.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0098.jpg

I move my main stack to Nicaea in the southwest and used 3 roaming samurais to take Antioch:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0099.jpg

In the mean time Dortmund flipped after revolting a couple of turns before:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0100.jpg

I decided to raze it. I took Thessalonica and Trebizond on the same turn:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0101.jpg

And this is where I'm at now:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0102.jpg

I'm finally ahead on power, but behind on tech:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0103.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0104.jpg

I haven't lost many units, so when Engineering is in, I'll build trebs and attack Frederick next:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0105.jpg

Had a quick play around with this last night, I'll finish writing up my report on it tonight. Had a question though, for those aiming at conquest style gameplans.


Do you have a rough date you will aim for for this? Some some of estimated time frame in which you can take hold of your continent, and still have a good shot at a domination victory afterwards?

I warred a bit and found that by the time I almost had the continent wrapped up it was like 600AD. This is much later than i expected, though i think it still leaves me enough time to rebuild and invade the other continent, its not at all how my games normally go.


EDIT: also, another quick thought. I saw on another thread somewhere some more details about the leaders.. what rating they will declare war on you, or trade maps or whatever. where can i find a reference for these?

Snowstorm:


You have plenty of time to conquer the other continent and you have to wait for galleons anyway. If your economy is in good shape, you can start building units already and attack as soon as you have galleons. Anyway, if you check my last part, in 1890 I didn't have a single unit on the other continent. And the game was over in 1942 (domination). So yes, you have a lot of time.


You can find that reference sheet here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=236346).

Ai Shizuka, thanks for the reference :)

As for the game:


I figure I should have enough time to sort myself out, conquer the germans and be ready to start shipping units over. Figure i'll make friends with one of them, open borders and use their territory as a shiny staging platform.

My economy is in terrible shape, towards the end of the massive war, my research is dead in the water. I think Frederick has slightly better tech than me, but not many units (although he has axes and i still only really have my army of chariots, albeit decimated from the warring). I figure if i can build up 2 sizable stacks of elephants i can take his bordering cities and move inwards, shouldnt take more than 20 turns.

You are going to tank your economy even more in a war vs Fred and you will be forced into a heavy recovery phase. But the big land advantage will be enough to catch up and get an edge in the industrial/modern era.

Again, check my tech situation at the end of part III (1720) and end of part IV (1892) . That's from pure cottage spamming and multiplier buildings, while still building units in a couple cities. I'm no expert (still at Prince), but that "land is power" tip you see everywhere isn't just a motto.

Just be sure to have enough units to end quickly the war vs Fred and be careful on the diplomacy in the recovery stage.

Towards the end things tend to get a little crazy and it's harder to come up with sensible reports (for me anyway...) but my game's got some similarities to the ones described above so...

@snowstorm and Ai Shizuka



1445 AD Fred offered to become my vassal after I did Justy but before I'd attacked him. But...

1515 AD I attacked Fred anyway because I'd rebuilt my military - Samurai which were going to be getting a little old by the time Astronomy/Galleons came along.

1655 Fred was dead. Samurai/trebs did him in.

I was down to like 10% science at this point though I had my whole continent, so I put two units for defense in each city and deleted the rest (least experienced units). Then I spent another couple of hundred years building banks, etc. infrastructure - while teching rifling, astronomy, steel, artillery. As I got these techs I switched to building units again, and pulled my most experienced units over to a city on the east coast... Dropped my science to 0% for a couple of turns to get enough cash to upgrade samurai to rifles, mounted units to cavalry, cats/trebs to cannon - and then about the time I had a dozen galleons I finished artillery so that was my edge - cannons upgraded to artillery just in time to load them on the boats and sail for China.

So I attacked China in about 1880 with 39 artillery/rifles/cavalry and they are out now in 1915. Asoka was Qi's vassal so I'm still at war with him, but he hasn't really done anything other than sink a couple of ships.

I have my whole continent, all of Qi's land and what? No victory yet? :lol: How do you get to the "victory conditions" screen? Is that a mod?

Anyway - I've got to be pretty close to domination. Victoria just built the UN and I control it - I've got a majority of votes and no one can block me. That's hilarious! You don't need to build the UN when you own close to 70% of the planet! Let someone else build it for you.

Maybe now that war with China is over and those cities will pop back out to normal size that will get me domination. Meantime I'll go for peace for 10 turns with Asoka I think, while I build up military again in case I need some of his empire to win...

Delhi's got a lot of wonders, so if I need another target, that will be it.



Oh and @ Fierabras...



You said you have plenty of units left - but you left Justy with 2? cities - why not just wipe him out?

@gmc4738

in the top right there is a button with a fist on it.. thats the victory conditions screen. i dont use any mods and i have it so you should too :)

Your game has alot of similarities to mine.


What year did you manage to own your own continent? I havn't bumped into the other lot yet so i'm not sure how that continent is going, will have to make a friend to start invading it though i guess.


I guess on noble its pretty easy to recover and tech up to a massive advantage once you've finished the first grab for land/first few wars. Maybe i should move up a difficulty level.

As a side note, in the guide under the leader section it has this:

tech trading: willing, 30%

what does the percentage mean?

Prince/Epic 1935 Domination win, Score 33568 "Augustus Caesar" :p - a personal best for me!

I can still hear the crowd in my ears: "Caesar! Caesar!"...



... as I give Asoka the thumbs down and he is dead in 1934. Next turn (after all his light purple is gone... win! Cool! So in the end I wiped out Justy, Fred, Qi and then Asoka - which was finally enough.

Lucky too, because both Victoria and Pericles were pretty far ahead of me in tech, I would have needed a long, long time to mount any sort of attack on them. They would have gotten to space first for sure. Vicky had already built some space components.

Thanks for the tip on on the "fist" button snowstorm - to answer your question, I had all of my continent by 1655 AD.

Looking back, I'm pretty happy with how I took my own continent. I waited too long for Astronomy possibly to start in on the other continent. I didn't build enough siege weapons for Qi and Asoka - My stock of artillery were gone near the end, which meant for pretty bloody battles for the last few cities. I was essentially using my first 10-12 units to do what 3 artillery would have done.

I chose to go for Asoka because some of Qi's cities had started to pop back to normal size and I still didn't have enough land for the win. Plus we were already at war anyway, and Delhi had a number of wonders. Asoka only had 4 cities anyway, and my army was still about 50 infantry/cavalry with a few artillery left. The decision was kind of made for me at that point - I'd built up so much momentum I couldn't stop :lol:. With an army of 50 or so units, and more landing all the time I had to keep going.

The lack of artillery definitely hurt though. I think I lost 6 or 7 cavalry to an Indian SAM at one point before he wore down enough for infantry to take him. I just overwhelmed him. I guess that's the "land advantage" someone talked about earlier. When I had all my 20+ cities pumping out marines/tanks by the end it was just flooding the other continent.

Strange game for me - I never teched liberalism for example. I had 2 great engineers stockpiled at the end. I usually keep them for wonders, but I was behind in tech and Vicky just kept building everything! Never got the chance!

There were a *lot* of inefficiencies in my game - especially after the 1600's. Not at the beginning - I'm pretty good up to the Middle Ages or so, but by the time I'd knocked Fred out, I had automated all my workers and I was switching things in the building queue more often than strictly necessary. I didn't really bother will city specialization after the early days either.

This seemed a pretty "easy" game in that not much unexpected happened. I was able to pick off the AI opponents one at a time. Qi was just sitting there like a fat turkey waiting to be plucked. I'm not sure what the heck he was doing, cause he wasn't teching that well, nor was he militaristic. Fred and Vicky were surprising because of their ability to tech/build without much land - Vicky especially. I don't know how she was doing it. Thankfully she didn't have better land, or more of it, or she would have been really tough.

I could have been more efficient, and with hindsight, more aggressive. I was cautious and kept a reasonable defense behind which I didn't need in the end, and that slowed me down a little.

I'm going to make Astronomy more of a priority in games like this in future! Possibly I'll move up a level next month too. :crazyeye:



Thanks to TMIT and Bleys for doing this series and working on the maps, etc. I'm looking forward to the next one!

Oh - and one more question/discussion point for those going for Domination...



Why wouldn't you wipe out both Justy and Fred? If I understand some of the discussion above, there seems to be some disagreement on this. It seems to me that there is time to do them both before Astronomy (although admittedly, I would have liked to get galleons earlier!) Whichever order you do them in, the second one's going to be on the pointy end of samurai for sure. So while, I guess you can imagine a strategy where you do only one of them and then try for astronomy to get samurai to the other continent in time, I'm not sure why you'd go for that, rather than an AI closer to home

As a side note, in the guide under the leader section it has this:

tech trading: willing, 30%

what does the percentage mean?

The AI will be willing to trade technologies if 30% of civs that he/she is in contact with already have the technology. Exceptions include WFYABTA, if they're building the associated wonder, or if their diplomatic stance is below the minimum for tech trading (a common one would be Annoyed, as many AI's trade at Cautious).

@gcm4738

I did wipe him out in 1040 AD, but I wanted to post the report on 1000 AD...

Having finished the game this morning - I read back through this thread completely. I can't believe that I needed to defeat...



4 other civs completely to get a Dom win :mad: Some others basically used the same strategy I did and got Dom by conquering only a couple/few cities on the other continent in the 1700's - I mean... look at the minimap in the lower right corner the turn before victory I needed to have something like the whole top half of the other continent!

Is this 'cause Peri and Vicky had "cultured" out into the ocean to increase the "total land size" or something? Ok - so Peri did build a garbage city on my north coast which didn't help, but still... sheesh!

http://i347.photobucket.com/albums/p459/gcm4738/TokEpPr1935Dom.jpg

@DMOC:

cheers, that helps me alot.. makes sense now!

@gcm4738:

grats on the win. 1655 seems quite late to me, although i dont know how many years it goes up per turn (im in 550 or something at the moment, and fred has 3 cities left).

I guess maybe people will leave a vassal on their home turf as it might be a lot of effort taking someone out that doesn't need taking out? I don't know how much benefit you get out of vassals, as it stands i'v NEVER managed to vassalize someone :D

This is only my third game on noble so i don't really have much of a grasp of mechanics or anything yet.

@ Fierabras - Ok :lol: That makes sense!

@ snowstorm



I agree - it was later than necessary. I got caught up in building my economy up more than I should have after finishing Justy off and I almost left it too late. The other thing was I built a decent defense as well as a SoD - so that Fred could not take any of my cities while I was fighting Justy - and I probably overbuilt anyway, since I ended up deleting 20+? units after the war with Fred. I rolled him easier than I would have thought.

If I were to play again I would change those things, and get Astronomy much earlier. By tweaking the strategy only a little in this way I think I could win out by the 1700's or so.

As far as the vassals - I guess I'm just thinking that given the time - what else are you going to do other than conquer Fred?? I don't see the point in vassalizing Fred. I'd rather just kill him. If you're looking at having the whole continent to yourself before 1000 AD - you've got time to rebuild your economy and pick up some other useful tech while going for astronomy and then attacking overseas!

It seems to me that's how this game should go - get rid of Justy and Fred asap. If you can do that and still have some time to rebuild before invading the other continent is an option so much the better. I'd probably finish them just about the time I was ready for AI number 3 anyway

gcm4738:



I accepted Fred as a vassal for some reasons:

1- It was a spontaneous vassalization at pleased (went up to friendly). So I didn't have to fear a constant stream of spies poisoning/sabotaging my cities and destroying my improvements. Learned this lesson the hard way in the last NC game with Shaka, where I accepted Saladin's capitulation. He was furious/annoyed for the rest of the game and a major pita with his spies. He even managed to destroy a spaceship part.

2- I was very backward and Fred was teching well, even with his small empire. You can redirect his research and a friendly vassal can be a very useful tech trading partner. Even if he fall behind later, you can redirect him to some secondary tech, while teching for military, and trade.

His vassalization was completely unexpected anyway, and he was the next target if things went differently.
Not sure if it was the right thing to do, but it helped my recovery a lot.

Accepting him as a vassal if you know how to get him to fill out the early techs for you is fair enough i reckon if it helps you recover.

I'm not OCD enough any more than I NEED the continent to myself, though it is of course my goal. I used to be real OCD when it came to games like civ, but not so much any more :P

I'll post my report when i have it done. I'll probably play through the game again, simply to see how much of an improvement i can make on the time of my victory. I know it's not really fair to use the same map as i'll know everything about it, but will be an interesting exercise.

Are you guys finding Noble a little easy? I'v played only a handful of games so far, didn't even own civ4 (played SMAC more previously) until a little while ago. I guess its all relative though, maybe this was just a particulary easy scenario? It's very nicely built though, and was tons of fun to play (thanks TMIT) :)

@Snowstorm
Are you guys finding Noble a little easy?
For the most part the maps are very kind in the nobles club. They are quite often suited to a particular strategy to give peeps the opportunity to try different strategies/move up a difficulty. I found this one particularly kind, getting samurais online before 0AD, with the powerful high commerce/food start. In hindsight I should have dropped to prince instead of noble to learn playing at epic speed (marathon is my usual speed).

@ singlemalt - you mean "upped" to prince - not dropped right? :lol: unless you mean further down the menu



and yes, this map was pretty kind - except for the no copper thing. But I guess if no one has it, it's the same for everyone! (unless your UU depends on it or something)



@snowstorm and ai shizuka



Ok on the vassal thing. I didn't mean to sound like some sort of warmongering know-it-all. Actually I'm neither! If you weren't in a situation to wipe Fred out, then I understand the vassal decision. I'd just thought you were and decided to do something else, which I wanted to understand.

Funny cause I used to play with a similar strategy to the AI and I'd end up racing them to space. At prince and higher, I'd always lose. I just wasn't aggressive enough. Even in this game I probably would have stopped invading if I thought I could get ahead in tech that way, but I just couldn't seem to get there, so I kept attacking until the game was over. Even when I stopped for a little while to repair infrastructure, etc. and got my economy in pretty good shape, I was still dropping behind Vicky fast enough that I would never have gotten there without going for domination I don't think.

It's impossible for me to compete with the financial civs at prince unless I'm financial myself. It's too much of an advantage. This game was nearly my nightmare scenario. If Vicky had had better land, I would have been sweating. A financial civ far away with really good land... *groan*... hard to beat.

gmc4738


Of course you have to keep it mind that a vassal can eventually beat you to space or culture. But it obviously wasn't the case in this game. With a 6 cities empire he was still in contact until industrial era, but he was doomed to fall behind sooner or later, and boud to research secondary techs for trading purposes. And even at tech parity, he had no chance to compete with my production power.

Final note, if you are going for conquest/domination, a possible space race is out of question anyway, unless you royally screw it up somewhere.



About difficulty. I'm playing at Prince now, but I think I will move to Monarch in 4-5 games. I win 90% of my games now (check Fred's LHC game for an example of that 10% :lol: ) and some of them are still quite messy.

But still, I think it's way more educational to get a good beating on a higher level and work from there.
I did the same at Noble. No more than 12-13 games before moving to Prince, 2 surprisingly good games there, followed by a streak of 3-4 very educational defeats. I don't think you need to totally steamroll all of your games before moving up. You can still come back later for some stress-relieving ownage at lower levels.

And I'm not a fan of "self-conferred bonuses" either, like no barbs, imba leaders/map or whatever when moving up a level.

@ Ai Shizuka

"I think it's way more educational to get a good beating on a higher level and work from there"

I totally agree! I was bored a few months ago and started playing all the succession games at the time... Even Immortal Cookbook. I wasn't posting, but playing in the background and learning, even when I was getting beat up. I was learning *more* when I was getting beat! :lol:

If you want let's climb the ladder together - Start a Monarch/Epic game - any leader, any civ, any map - as long as it's not totally weird! Post the 4000 BC save and we'll play alongside each other. I can't wait for the next Noble's Club. Not competitive - just for fun and learning. Maybe someone else wants to join in too?

"You wanna go talk to God? Let's go see Him together. I've got nothing better to do..." - Indiana Jones

I am real bad at warmongering its still 1855 and I dont control my entire continent though I am using the AP to create World Wars :)

Emperor/Epic

4000 BC: Starting thoughts (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7544775&postcount=10)
4000 BC - 2025 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7545276&postcount=24)
2025 BC - 500 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7546111&postcount=30)
500 BC - 670 AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7548306&postcount=58)
670 AD - 1000 AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7552718&postcount=73)
1000 AD - 1350 AD



After building 8 trebs I attacked Frederick with my 24 samurais and some pikemen, as he had knights already. My CR promoted samurais won all their battles and Germany was quickly decimated. I met some other civs and the tech situation is not looking rosy. I teched Compass, Optics(bulb), Feudalism and Guilds for the groceries. Should I take a peace treaty with Frederick for some techs (he won't give me Banking)?

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0118.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0119.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0120.jpg

If you want let's climb the ladder together - Start a Monarch/Epic game - any leader, any civ, any map - as long as it's not totally weird! Post the 4000 BC save and we'll play alongside each other. I can't wait for the next Noble's Club. Not competitive - just for fun and learning. Maybe someone else wants to join in too?

Just made the jump to monarch this week, I'd certainly like to participate. Since we agree that getting your butt kicked can be a good thing, let's play it without any frills. Barbs stay on, huts are on, and brokering is enabled.

Sounds interesting. I still have a couple Prince games to complete, but in the next couple days I may be able to generate something to try the jump to Monarch.

Nothing fancy: random leader on a shuffle map and play whatever the game throws at us.

edit: there is just a single game I'd really like to complete before moving up. So probably I'll post a save tomorrow.

@gcm, I meant that I dropped from monarch to get to grips with epic speed. For this I dropped to noble, when I should have dropped to prince as noble was a cakewalk. My brain isn't thinking right, too much study:crazyeye:

Edit - double post

@ Ai Shizuka - Ok - we're on then. I'm tempted to say go with your "home team" and give us Caesar - I always like playing as Rome. Or one of the financial civs... Elizabeth, Hannibal, Ragnar... which I always use when trying to move up. But I threw down the gauntlet - so it's your choice of weapon :lol:! Random leader - ok. Instead of shuffle map though - what about doing continents - or custom continents, random so we don't end up with the "ice planet islands" or something. You can regenerate if needed so that it at least looks like a decent start to you - that's fair enough in my book. Normal size/Epic speed? Everything else normal... barbs, techs, personalities, victory conditions, etc.? Like you and FlyinJohnnyL I don't believe in crippling the game just so I can say I moved up. Those are my prefs - but like I say, I'll play whatever you come up with! Same rules/guidelines as "Noble's Club"? That seems pretty good to me. Although I'm happy to try and provide a little more detail about what I was doing, which I was a little lax about with Tokugawa.

@FlyinJohnnyL - Yeah join in! The more the merrier! Who knows - maybe this is a new series in the making! Although I thought of a great name - "Two Princes" - like the old Spin Doctors song: "One has diamonds in his pocket, and that's some bread now. This one says he wants to give you rockets, ain't in his head now..." Or maybe I'm showing my age there :rolleyes:

You know what would be another great series is something like the Ryder cup where the best players on this forum play in two teams - Europe v. North America - that would be really cool. Especially if you set it up with teams of players of varying levels - so we could watch competetive games on the same map played at Immortal, Monarch, Noble, etc. You could really learn a lot that way. But I digress...

Anyway - I'll eagerly await your post, and lest you think that I'm a one trick pony, get ready for my Salto della quaglia matte :crazyeye:

@single malt - Ok I gotcha now. Why not come back to Monarch with us and play the game Ai Shizuka posts later? Study can wait. Pour yourself a nice Glenmorangie or something :lol: Obviously too much study can be bad for you! Epic is supposed to be easier - or so some say. I just like it better. With a slower game, you can make changes in your strategy easier without suffering as big a penalty.

@ Fierabras



Just my 2 cents, but about now you should probably have some idea of where you're going with this game. If you want domination then wipe Fred out if you can. If you're going for something else, or you can't wipe him out then you could vassalize him or get techs off him or both and move on to your next phase.



@assass1n

Are you trying to warmonger? What are you struggling with?

Are you even/ahead in military techs? (with the units to match). Do you have a decent stack of doom? Say 30 units or so with 20 melee/10 siege (city raider promotions) with maybe some protective units (spears/pikes), a healing unit (low strength unit with only med promotions) and some city defenders to leave behind in your captured cities (if you can afford them)? Are you fighting in 3 phases - i.e. 1) bomb the city with your siege till defense is 0% (melee units can heal when you're doing this!), 2) attack with a couple of your siege for the collateral damage and then 3) attack! Are you freaking out when you're doing this about your sliders dropping? Are you continuing to pump out military units for reinforcement until you're sure you don't need any more?

@gcm4738


Freddy's got to go for sure, but I'm wondering how to remove in the most advantageous way. I can take 4 techs, 200 gold and a world map for 10 turns of peace, move my units to the north and take his last city when the treaty expires. I'm not sure how bad it will affect the diplo situation (although I probably should not worry about that). Beelining Rifling and going for an early domination win is where I'm going.

The Monarch game is ready: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7562818#post7562818

@gcm
I am at tech parity but usually one SoD isnt enough and I have to take peace and wipe them out in the second attmept
and also I am more of a builder I like my shiny wonders and its harder to get them without the Industrious trait
All my high scores have been with Industrious leaders except for the last NC with Shaka

@ Fierabras



If Fred's going to cough up 4 techs, 200 gold and a world map to postpone his demise for 10 turns, that sounds pretty good to me! I don't think you will suffer any additional diplo penalty for doing him later... not sure whether it would add another -1 YDWOOF or not... don't think so. I never thought of trying this - in a lot of situations waiting 10 turns isn't going to matter anyway. I might have to try this in future!

gcm, I find epic a lot harder than marathon, as I cannot judge whats a slow or quick build time.

To The End :
Space Victory :sad:

I was at war with Fred and after taking his Capitol which had 10 wonders and another city he capitulated then I went for Vicky who also capitulated and saved my game and declared on Ashoka
As I brought my SoD nearer to Delhi he just nuked it completely :mad:
and so I reloaded from the save and played it out to Space :cry: was @ 60
p.c. land and 50 p.c pop even tried for diplo but asoka has 200 + votes :sad: and couldnt make it
Got to Space in 1980

Emperor/Epic

4000 BC: Starting thoughts (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7544775&postcount=10)
4000 BC - 2025 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7545276&postcount=24)
2025 BC - 500 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7546111&postcount=30)
500 BC - 670 AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7548306&postcount=58)
670 AD - 1000 AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7552718&postcount=73)
1000 AD - 1350 AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7561334&postcount=93)
1350 AD - 1505 AD: Loss!


I decided to take a peace treaty with Frederick for Paper, Banking, 200 gold and world map. I didn't really need Meditation, Monotheism and music yet.

After 10 turns I declared war again and Freddy was no more:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0125.jpg

It did get me a -1 diplo with all the other civs though, but I was still the strongest civ on the world:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0126.jpg

All this time I did not have a single religion, but with trade routes open, this finally happened:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0127.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0128.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0129.jpg

In the mean time I used a great scientist for a golden age to get the economy back on track. I did switch to Mercantilism for a while (I have the Pyramids and I'm running Representation), but switched back to Decentralization for the trade routes. For this I had to exchange techs:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0130.jpg

I was on my way and was planning to take China with rifles on galleons when this suddenly happened:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0131.jpg

:(:(:(:(:(

I wasn't paying attention and actually voted for Pericles, but it didn't matter, he would have won without my vote.

So, where did I go wrong? Could I have stopped Hinduism spreading to my continent?


This was the first time I played on Emperor level. I did pretty well. It's not that different from Monacrh, just bring more units and learn to play without a tech lead...

Hi

@firebras :( sorry for the loss. The only way I know for sure to stop foriegn religion spread is by running theocracy. That should stop it for the most part. Although there are some events that can spread it automatically too and I am not sure running theo can stop that.

Kaytie

Hi

@firebras :( sorry for the loss. The only way I know for sure to stop foriegn religion spread is by running theocracy. That should stop it for the most part. Although there are some events that can spread it automatically too and I am not sure running theo can stop that.

Kaytie

Just turn events off ;).

Another way to stop autospread is to instantly spread a different religion to every city as you found it. The AI seldom ships missionaries so it's worth noting if running theo isn't feasible.

I have replayed my save from 1350 AD a bit and did prioritize Monotheism-Theology to get to theocracy before the trade routes come online. Only Buddhism spread to 1 city (because the founder took Astronomy from Liberalism and got a trade route) and I switched to theocracy without choosing a state religion. I wonder if 'no state religion' will prevent religion spreading under theocracy...

I'm going to take a shot at this as my first game in about 4 months. Wish me luck!
Probably grab it at Monarch just to give myself a fighting chance.

I have replayed my save from 1350 AD a bit and did prioritize Monotheism-Theology to get to theocracy before the trade routes come online. Only Buddhism spread to 1 city (because the founder took Astronomy from Liberalism and got a trade route) and I switched to theocracy without choosing a state religion. I wonder if 'no state religion' will prevent religion spreading under theocracy...

Theology blocks religion spread even in NSR. Well, it blocks auto spread. You can still spread them yourself with your own missionaries of course.

It did work out in my replay. Eventually I chose Buddhism as state religion to let it auto-spread under theocracy. Domination victory in 1782 AD :)



http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0138.jpg

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/Civ4ScreenShot0139.jpg

Noble, Epic, to 1825 BC (with dotmap)
I'm going to try really really hard to finish this soon without restarting, so I'm going to post intermediate thoughts but not wait terribly long for comments -- try to do with just basic "real life" interruptions.
Flood plains. And Toku starts with the pre-reqs for pottery. Don't say I'm not being kind.I decided to follow the path suggested ny TMIT's hint and went pottery first. I settled in place for the extra defence, since at this point I had no idea how necessary the protective trait might be. I never thought about 1S, as several others did, but even if I'd thought about it I might have stayed on the hill anyway. It turns out that one of my choices for a production city might make staying in place reasonable so the two could overlap on the rice (which Kyoto doesn't much need, aside from health benefits).

I built a worker first (who set about building cottages on flood plains) followed by a granary, and am going to try to remember to actually do a bit of whipping this time around (I suspect I could have started to whip earlier than I did). I'm now building a library while chopping the first settler, but I don't plan to chop all that much because I'm worried about health with the flood plains. Tech path was pottery > writing (!??) > mining > bronze > hunt > arch > agr > AH. ISTM next is either iron (hoping to find the strategic resource before founding my 3rd city) or masonry.

The nearest two huts gave me a map to other huts, and the second gave mysticism, which I refused to let tempt me into switching from Pottery to Polytheism. Two more, significantly later and despite my opponent's scouts, gave a bit of gold and experience for my exploratory warrior.

I'm now deciding on city placement:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/dalamb54/NC/17%20Tokugawa/NC17Toku1825BC06.jpg
As usual I'm confused at this point. Light blue gets horses, corn, and more floodplains, so I think it needs to be 2nd or 3rd city (capital being 1). Light green might be a decent production city post-IW -- two rice (one overlapping Kyoto), 4 GH, and some farmable grassland. It can do OK for a while while I tech IW, since it can work Kytoto's rice while waiting for me to build something to give a bit of culture for expansion. So perhaps I should go for my 2nd there just to block Justinian for now.

I don't see a good seaport on either coast. To the west, light orange has too much desert. Dark brown is not bad, but I expect Frederick has it by now so I think I may need to conquer one.

1825 BC - 580 AD
I just finished researched Machinery and am able to build samurai but currently expect to wait a bit longer until the 3 eastern production cities have forges). I have the feeling I'm 'way behind where others have reached by now, and may go back to read the thread, fiercely resisting the urge to restart and use somebody else' strategy. I'm fairly sure part of my problem is not building enough workers soon enough and not pushing out another settler or two before Code of Laws. Here is my current territory.
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/dalamb54/NC/17%20Tokugawa/NC17Toku580AD0000.jpg
I wasn't able to build my previously-mentioned iron city where I wanted, because of a barb city on the east coast (currently ruins; it didn't seem worth keeping despite having corn). I think another mistake was not researching iron soon after I discovered there was no copper, which would have prompted me to push out another settler sooner.

I am a little behind the other two (Frederick and Justinian) in power but expect that to change rapidly. I plan to take out Frederick, but am not sure what to do about Justinian afterwards. He's the one who spread Buddhism to me, and is Friendly; Fred is merely Cautious because he switched from Buddhism to Taoism not long ago; I suspect he's aiming for Liberalism and a cultural win.
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/dalamb54/NC/17%20Tokugawa/NC17Toku580ADPower0000.jpg

@dalamb


I feel you have missed settling the spot where Essen is the most. I'm not sure why you build Tokyo in the North instead. That said, you have still good chances to win this game. Don't worry about trailing in techs, build your Samurau and take what belongs to toku...

@Fierabras:Yep, I'd certainly have preferred the western iron, but as I said, I expanded too slowly and went for iron too late. Tokyo was the only place left for me to get iron once I let the barbs build their cities. I should have clued in that without bronze I desperately needed iron, and gone for IW much sooner than I did. In fact I plan to try that eventually in a restart, but I'm going to stubbornly work through this game first.

And now I'm in the midst of crushing Frederick like a bug. Samurai, trebuchets, and suicide cats are a fine combination.

Finished my game now.. got a domination victory in 1952 after taking out Justin, Frederick, Asoka and Big Country :)

Will post my report tonight.

@KaytieKat:Well since I am pretty sure constaniople is derived from ancient greek word meaning "warrior rush me please" And since my second warrior already done thanks to working the treed hill..Why is it that Justinian is especially vulnerable to a warrior rush? Ordinarily I might have guessed Constantinople was too far away -- or is that less of a problem since you're on Marathon? (I mostly play Epic and sometimes Normal).@all, but especially gcm4738:Settler is enroute up north to settle silver/deer/horses site for the extra +1 happy - rarely is a silver site worth settling this earlyI noticed rather late that 1W of silver gave me deer and crabs for extra health; I found health to be a real limiter for me in this game. Did anyone else settle this site fairly early?

Short of going into the WB (in game!) yourself and adding archery to the barb side, I don't know how you'd get around this.Hmm. If one zooms in very close to the map, can one "add archery to barbs" (however one does that) without having to see much of the map? Or does one have to go hunting around the map for something, thus seeing too much?

@KaytieKat:Why is it that Justinian is especially vulnerable to a warrior rush? Ordinarily I might have guessed Constantinople was too far away -- or is that less of a problem since you're on Marathon? (I mostly play Epic and sometimes Normal).@all, but especially gcm4738:I noticed rather late that 1W of silver gave me deer and crabs for extra health; I found health to be a real limiter for me in this game. Did anyone else settle this site fairly early?


I settled my 5th city in the north just for the deer. Later I settled another city (more to the east) for the crab. Health was definitely hard to come by on this map.

How do you folks get the images to be full sized within the spoilers?I use IMG tags instead of ATTACH. You can store your images at a place like photobucket.com, and it has a place you can click to generate the IMG tag and copy it to the clipboard.

Yes, once you get the hang of this you can get loads of screenshots in your posts pretty fast. Photobucket really rocks in this respect, so easy to use.

I'm excited to start this up in the morning.
Playing normal speed and on noble(hopefully will also get first win at noble)

@dalamb

I noticed rather late that 1W of silver gave me deer and crabs for extra health; I found health to be a real limiter for me in this game. Did anyone else settle this site fairly early?

I didn't, but that sounds like a good plan. I've played a couple of games since this one, so this one's starting to get a little fuzzy, but I do remember that my city placement was not optimal in this game. Good enough to win, but not textbook stuff.