Normal people don't play games in 3 hours but I do. Note that this is a COMPLETED game. If you do not want Kossin's game spoiled in terms of AI location and one of the strategies, read no further. If you're cool with seeing it, read on but do me a favor and don't take that knowledge into his thread, I made this separate for a reason.

I also welcome any of the other shadows that are ahead of him here, if anyone else cares to do it.

Hopefully, he tries something other than what I did, but I guess we could always compare notes if we wind up choosing the same strategy.

1 AD



First things first, we settle in place. I don't need or want to move my warrior before doing it, because I want more exploration and I'm perfectly happy with double corn. As per usual I send my warrior along the coast, the first one to the NE, the 2nd one (post worker 1st) to the NW.

Now very early on I ran into an interesting bit of info: Brennus, who is essentially walling a path to Sal and Hannibal, founded hinduism. Justinian predictably founded buddhism. It becomes quite apparent that hinduism is going to win out here, so I adopt it when it spreads to me, settle horses, plant a crappy (but effective for blocking) 3rd city, and hit Justinian with our UU: war chariots. Although stone suggests pyramids we are hatty so not IND and our land, other than a couple sites, isn't too impressive.

Early tech went mining>BW>AH>Fishing>Pottery>Writing. Writing was important, because I could get open borders:

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg

Now look carefully at the above picture. I have a trade network with Justinian (roads), and he has 2 sources of iron, 0 of copper. With yields on, we can spot the location of the irons. On turn 1 of the war, I was in position to pillage his irons by turn 2. I also stole a worker with my warrior to block hooking up copper. This got my warrior killed but did prevent any copper mining.

Justinian did not have a spear yet. He had 2 swords, 2 axes, and the rest were archers. Brilliant.

The AIs are jumping into things too:

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0001.jpg

Encouraging. It should be noted that nobody on this island will plan war at pleased, and the hindus like me already. I'm in the clear on the diplo end for now.

So after pounding on Justinians weak sauce archers he dies.

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0002.jpg

And I continue toward 1 AD. I had to delete all but 1 defender/city and guess what? I was STILL in strike for 2 turns, so I had a spawn bust chariot disbanded on me. Nevertheless, with foreign trade and cottage growth (I only cottaged the capitol and the blocking site which I couldn't usefully improve any other way for a long time), I was able to nudge back into the green. Annoyingly, the AIs do not yet have alphabet so even after aesthetics I'm going for it myself.

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0003.jpg

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0004.jpg

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0005.jpg

This is a very strong position with enough cities for end-game tech rates on immortal, but that doesn't mean I'll quit.



The liberalism race decided!



Now mashing on scientists off of CRE libraries does eventually turn up a great person (this is my 2nd GP, Justinian actually oracled metal casting and had some forges, and running an engineer for more GPP got me an accidental engineer...) The next one is a GS and I use him for an academy in the obvious usual place:

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0006.jpg

A use is found for the GE after all...a late great library instantly:

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0007.jpg

Unfortunately the AIs war too much and I don't get much in the way of gold to broker. The great library/national epic/scientists+engineer+spy GP farm was decent enough, and I did get 2 more scientists, used to bulb philosophy and education respectively, so I vault temporarily out of my tech hole enough to pick up:

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0008.jpg

Well that's not true actually, the AI wasn't really gunning for this so I did delay lib slightly to take astro. Might as well get some trade route bonuses and better multipliers.



And a fight to a not-so-bitter end in 1888 AD:



I wanted to get cavalry on someones face. I also set up globe in the triple fish site to the west of the capitol, figuring this to be a good draft site (it was). Unfortunately, the hindu tech group hug really put the pedal down on the tech rate and I couldn't get a lead. Whats worse, brennus spread every single religion but judaism and built all those buildings so the culture was insufferable. Then he went FR. Damn it all, who cares if he has rifles. I built university of sankore, he built apostolic palace, so I had good temples. I did something interesting here: I put all my cities on production automation and used them to whip cavalry (I'd farmed extensively outside my two cottage cities), and drafted rifles almost entirely from globe. I traded gandhi rifling for physics (partial researched) since I wanted some help vs a tech parity AI. Then, I went after brennus before he could get INFANTRY on me :/

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0009.jpg

I took 2 cities but it was a big slog. He had a lot of rifles in every city. I took his capitol with my 2nd to last cavalry, so I took cease fire to heal and go again (both of the other hindus stayed pleased for this and were not threats). During the 2nd war I get an unexpected/rare sight: a Gandhi DoW:

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0010.jpg

I pushed through 2 more cities (note that I never went after a single hill city...) and then:

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0011.jpg

Very good. Now some people don't know that you can prevent city revolts using garrisons. This is exactly what I did here, to allow these very nice cities (a >40 gold shrine included!) to be productive for me.

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0012.jpg

Gandhi was going culture. So annoying. I just got lazy from here. I turned all cities to production automation and let them build whatever the hell they wanted while I teched medicine (had bio before war ended) + traded/teched toward assembly line. One thing that just made this game silly was that I captured the KREMLIN, and yes that does reduce whipping cost. Of my BIOLOGY farms. Oh god.

My civics at that point were representation, nationhood, slavery, environmentalism, and OR (went back to theology for military later, the rest stayed this way).

So using environmentalism to skimp on health infrastructure, my cities whipped their way into productive godliness while I beelined industrialism.

Gandhi's 3rd city was around 35k when I was ready to put a cork in that nonsense:

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0013.jpg

What's a good warmonger strategy?

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0014.jpg

Tanks vs rifles is a good warmonger strategy! Even funnier, by the time this war was over, I'd landed about 40 mech infantry over there to help continue to take cities.

Gandhi was master of mansa musa (voluntary) and colony Mehmed. Masters of vassals don't usually capitulate, but this is Gandhi. After mowing down a good # of his cities, Mansa broke free and I had about 5x the average power, so I got past the hindrance and got a TRIPLE capitulation in one turn (mansa, gandhi, mehmed).

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0015.jpg

From there I was spamming mech infantry (still with governor-handled whips) on the mainland and prepping to hit Sal just before he got mech infantry himself. But, with the UN control in tow (captured it off Gandhi), I had a controlling interested in the world's stock of votes.

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0016.jpg

Now let's look at how the wars shook out unit-wise

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0017.jpg

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0018.jpg

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0019.jpg

Although the rifles killed is misleading since I used both cavalry and later tanks/mech infantry against those :/.

Nevertheless, it's a W notched so that's always good. Score:

http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy189/Splatciv4/Kossin%20Immortal/Civ4ScreenShot0020.jpg

Just ok.

So this is one approach. In Kossin's game he is deliberating between a war chariot rush (similar to mine, but we'll see if he blocks without being told to do it to keep brennus reasonable) and using stone to get the pyramids and go "SE".

Let's say this again: CE and SE are garbage terms. What's more, they don't even carry a shred of meaning until the mid-late game, where civics and improvements available actually make it possible to have a blanked improvement tendency. I only cottaged 2 out of over 10 cities captured/settled in this prior to cavalry war, but most of my research came from 2 cities: tricked out bureaucracy commerce capitol with academy and later oxford, and my TGL/NE great person farm (bulbs, wonder rushes).

Later on one would say I was mostly using specialists but passive commerce never stopped being relevant (nor did the capitol, even in nationhood), though my civics and having statue of liberty captured leaned me more towards a specialist rig who knows what the hell the governor was doing (actually I do: it was running first engineers, then priests, then whatever if it couldn't work something it considered a good productive tile, which farms are under slavery).

This game also showcased a diversion from state property or corporations (though I founded a 22 beaker standard ethanol while Gandhi was getting destroyed, it hardly affected the outcome). The UN left slavery alone because by the time it was built, I was in control of it. Ha!

Nice report TMIT :goodjob:
I've often wondered about automating the whipping as I just suck at it.
How different is it from efficient micro?

@ TMIT
Is there a rule as to how many units you need garrisoning a captured city to prevent a revolt, or do you just estimate how many are needed? I often myself trying to eliminate people or razing border cities before taking cap, as it's so annoying not to mention costly to have them revolt.

@ TMIT
Is there a rule as to how many units you need garrisoning a captured city to prevent a revolt, or do you just estimate how many are needed? I often myself trying to eliminate people or razing border cities before taking cap, as it's so annoying not to mention costly to have them revolt.

I'm not sure how it's worked out but if you hover over the culture bar of the captured city, just below the buildings list, the city's % chance per turn of revolting is listed. You can put another unit in the city and check that again to see how much the % has gone down due to the extra unit.

I'm sure someone has worked out the exact numbers but this at least can give you some idea of how many units you'll need in a given city.

Yeah I don't know about efficient whipping w/ the governor...for one thing it will not stack whip anger or swap tiles between cities for you so it's not going to be optimized. Nevertheless I had enough of a lead here not to care.

As for revolt chance, it is a function of culture pressure, tiles owned by opponent surrounding the city, current tile culture, and units in the city. Now, for some cities I could get by with 4 rifles. In the legendary capitol I captured, I had >10 mech infantry and still had revolt chance (which was bad, since another AI took it and I took it back, so it would flip...wound up stuffing 15 mech infantry/tanks in there to block revolts though it turned out to be moot).

Convincing win but if i compare it to Kossin's game i think he played it better. He also rushed and got a huge chunk of land but he's far from going broke 400 bc and he will get lib much earlier i feel. Enabling him to smash the rest of the world at leisure from there.He will have taken more time to play the game though ;).

Convincing win but if i compare it to Kossin's game i think he played it better. He also rushed and got a huge chunk of land but he's far from going broke 400 bc and he will get lib much earlier i feel. Enabling him to smash the rest of the world at leisure from there.He will have taken more time to play the game though ;).

Well...

He built pyramids, but his rush went worse. He's going to have 2-3 fewer cities post-rush secured than I had (he really should have scouted for metal). He's doing much better in tech but in HIS game the AIs didn't wait an eternity (as in until I wheezed to get it) in order to get #$^%ing alphabet. At least that meant a slow AI for me.

I would argue his econ/micro/going mids was better, but he is far behind in rush execution. We'll see how it plays out though.

He played to 1 AD too so a good comp can be made now. Agree that you were unlucky with ais not getting alpha earlier.

Having finished my game and read your report I will say this:

Nice game TMIT, a usual bashing of the AI! Your rush was indeed much better executed but I wonder why you kept his last city, it had nothing and missed the Clams?
Regarding the actual time played, I don't play quite as fast as you but the game more or less took me 5 hours of play so I don't find it so bad... the rest was idle time and report writing ;)

It's quite striking how different the games were. I think that the biggest difference actually comes from Brennus founding Hinduism. In my game, Sal got it and then he went for economic techs rather than try to secure himself a religion.

Having finished my game and read your report I will say this:

Nice game TMIT, a usual bashing of the AI! Your rush was indeed much better executed but I wonder why you kept his last city, it had nothing and missed the Clams?
Regarding the actual time played, I don't play quite as fast as you but the game more or less took me 5 hours of play so I don't find it so bad... the rest was idle time and report writing ;)

It's quite striking how different the games were. I think that the biggest difference actually comes from Brennus founding Hinduism. In my game, Sal got it and then he went for economic techs rather than try to secure himself a religion.

The rush was about the ONLY thing I executed better...you played quite well (better than me in every other respect) and the result shows.