Challenge-XV-08

I thought Asoka would vote for me because we had +12, but don't know how much more is needed :confused:?
In OCC you will always run against the largest opponent (the one with the most votes), and they will always vote for themselves no matter how much diplo bonus you have. Your goal is to get the votes from everybody else.
 
(This post is just to unburden...)

@Seraiel

Hi. I did another attempt following your video to Diplo Deity, but I think the Randon Gods are furious at me. I got a great capital, got Alpha, and even built the Pyramids. Everything was perfect, but then:

- #1 Great People: a Great Engineer :sad:
- #2 Great People with 80% GS: another Great Engineer :wallbash:
- #3 Great People with 87% GS: one more Great Engineer :badcomp: :gripe: :aargh:

I didn't build Academy, and was in the middle of Education when Lib was researched... End of game :lol:...
 

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Did you think about maybe using 1 of the GEs on TGL? And how come you were still that far away from Libetalism when AI got it? With REP, Caste and Pacifism research and GP generation should be really good.
 
Did you think about maybe using 1 of the GEs on TGL?
Nope. The first would be used to UN. I wouldn't know what to do with others.

And how come you were still that far away from Libetalism when AI got it? With REP, Caste and Pacifism research and GP generation should be really good.
In other games that I got Lib first, I used GSs for Philo or Paper, Edu and 1 to Lib. In this game, without them, things were different and far from my little experience. But there is time to another attempt.
 
Sry to ask, but where did you get 3 GSs without TGL? What I suspect, is that your research is way too low, or you're researching too many techs, instead of simply going CoL to Lib (you don't even need Currency with 1 city ) .

When you get so many GEs, think about rushing something useful (TGL, NE, Oxford, TM, Globe etc. ) or settle them.
Should you get GAs, use them for bulbing Radio.
 
Sry to ask, but where did you get 3 GSs without TGL?
The #1 comes with library (for Academy), and others after CoL, running more scientists. I didn't expect so many GEs, but rushing Wonders is great. Let's play again, and again, and ag... :crazyeye:
 
Sorry for the late writeup. I wanted to get it up days ago, but RL is kinda crazy these days.


Settings:

Too bad we were forced to play on a Pangaea. I’ve come to prefer Ice Age for UN games with industrious leaders, though Pangaea has definitely its advantages. Playing Louis was a no brainer.

I went with high sea level for closer AI and flat worldwrap for the lower distance maintenance. That combination tends to generate some weird continent shapes in combination with natural coastline, which often results in more seafood and islands being generated. I was hoping to capture a nice seafood capital as GP pump.

I checked “Aggressive AI“, as it is AMAZING on Deity/epic. I can understand why people are reluctant to use it in Space games, where you want the AI to keep up with your teching for much longer. But for UN games on Deity, not using it is a huge mistake, imo. The last tech you need from the AI is Optics. Rarely a problem. From what I can tell, the AI in my game were teching even a bit faster than in Seraiel’s game, but that might have been from me trading with them a bit more.

I usually use “No City Razing”, but forgot to check it for this game. And yes, I missed it. :(

As opponents, I picked mostly the usual suspects: Mansa, Gandhi, Hammurabi and Freddy as nice guys and, obviously, De Gaulle :whip:. Last AI was Joao. I like him a lot for UN games. He’s not too popular with the good guys and another possible war target, in case De Gaulle spawns far away. He usually expands well, which makes him a likely (and not very popular) opponent for the UN vote.


Early game:
My capital had 2 gold, dry corn, a few floodplains and a suspicious unforested tile. I popped Mysticism from a hut with my first border expansion. De Gaulle was very close, and his first two cities were on flat land. :thumbsup:

Tech path was Mining->BW (no copper :()->AH (horses :cool:). By the time I got to AH I had already stolen 3 workers, most of them while they were roading in neutral territory. I kept pillaging that road to lure them there. Worked like a charm. :thumbsup:

Around the time my first chariots were finished De Gaulle started patrolling with his archers and guarding his worker(s) with them. He even moved his second archer out of his second city. :eek: Fortunately, I had some chariots in place to snag it immediately. Only 1 chariot lost. I also killed a bunch of his roaming archers in flat, unforested terrain on the following turns, which brought him down to 4 defenders total for his remaining 2 cities.

Here is a screenshot from the turn of CF#5, shortly after I captured Lyons:
Spoiler :
qI2rhHZ.jpg

From the few tiles I have unfogged you can already see that Orleans will be a nice NE-city. I am getting set up to capture it well before t76 (border expansion). Mansa is already teching Alpha for me. He turned out to be the best Mansa I ever had in a game. Always grabbing the techs I wanted from him. Almost never going for techs I was teching myself. His tech pace perfect, not too fast or too slow. :love::love::love:

I captured Orleans on t65. It was defended by only 2 archers. I lost 4 chariots, 2 of them at very high odds. :mad: I had brought 6 chariots, so that was barely enough. 2 clams, wet wheat, plains cow and horses, quite a few forests. Very nice city!

De Gaulle’s third city was building a worker and took forever to grow to size 2. “No city razing” would have helped. :wallbash: I captured it on t89.

8 DoW’s total, but no diplo hits with the other AI. 3 rather nice cities captured. 7 workers stolen. It may be possible to beat that without Aggressive AI, but one would need a lot more units. From my experience, being able to cease fire almost immediately after a worker steal pushes the AI to build more workers instead of units.

Early game tech path after AH was Writing->Maths->Currency. I gave up on The Oracle shortly after 2000BC, when half the AI already had PH and Gandhi was unwilling to trade it because “reasons”. Huge mistake. :rolleyes:
 
Mid game:
After I had killed off De Gaulle, I was going to expand to 8 or 9 cities. Possibly one of my biggest mistakes this game was lack of scouting early on. I had yet to find stone and marble, or any city sites with decent food. I missed out on a very nice city site to my north. Fortunately, I found some unclaimed marble and stone when I finally started scouting with my remaining chariots and axes. I expanded to 8 cities (1275 BC), none of them very impressive, but good enough to build a uni and work a few scientists. Probably should have settled at least one more city.

Empire at 1000BC:
Spoiler :
zrfqZda.jpg

Hammurabi, founder of Judaism, did a great job spreading his religion to 7 out of my 8 cities. I only built one missionary for Marseilles and a few to switch Freddy and Gandhi into Judaism.

With stone, I built the Pyramids in my future NE city, Orleans, which meant my chance to get a GE for UN was probably no better than 80% or 85%. :eek: I usually prefer to build them in my capital, along with HG, for a 90…95% GE, but my capital was rather low on forests after I chopped 3 of them into chariots, and I wanted to save a few for Oxford and UN.

Around 1400 BC, I noticed that the Oracle was still available. I had just finished CoL, so Oracle for CS would have easily been possible, even with the detour to Currency. :wallbash: I switched to building it in one of my border cities where I was already pre-chopping forests. One chop was a turn late and Gandhi finally finished it one turn before me. The failgold was useful, I suppose.

With marble available, I went for the Aesthetics line after CS (950BC) and built GLib and NE in Orleans, but missed Parthenon by 1t. I also grabbed the Music Artist. My cities were mostly low on food and I felt I needed the GA for a Golden Age, to speed up GP production.

My second GP turned out to be a Great Engineer (~50% odds), which meant I could work 100% scientists everywhere. It also meant that I had to skip the Education bulb. Without the bulb, Education was delayed by ~6 turns, but that also gave me more time for chops into unis and Oxford. Oxford came in 4 turns after Education (290 BC), maybe 2-3 turns later than with an Education bulb.

Failgold (with IND, stone, marble), tech and resource trades, begs and very low city maintenance (flat map) helped a lot to keep my slider up. I was running 100% research slider all game, with the exception of a few turns before my academy was up and while I tried for Oracle->CS. I had so much gold, I switched from building wealth to building research soon after Education. I really should have settled more cities.


End game:
I started my Golden Age after Oxford was finished, switched into Caste/Pacifism and started running scientists everywhere. My research rate jumped from 350 bpt pre-Education to 700-800 bpt. Almost all of my scientists came from my NE/GLib city. My other cities were too low on food to support many specialists.

In my Inca game, I got to Radio from Liberalism. All those forests in Ice Age maps slow the AI down quite a bit. This game, Hammurabi went for Education a bit too early and forced me to take Physics with Liberalism instead. Up to this point, I was a couple turns ahead of my Inca game. Having to self-tech Radio put me behind. I started working artists in Orleans, so that I could put at least one artist-bulb into Radio.

I got 6 GScientists, 1 GEngineer, 2 GArtists total and bulbed PP (1 GS), Astro (1), Electricity (3), Radio (1 GA). That’s maybe 1 or 2 GP less than what I usually aim for with a non-PHI leader.

My final beaker output was 700-800 bpt, roughly the same as in my Inca game. Could have been more with a 9th city. I only built a Salon in my capital. They would not have paid off elsewhere.

Mass Media was finished in 460 AD. UN was built in my capital 1 turn later, with 3 chops, some Salon overflow and the GEngineer. As hoped, Joao had done a great job expanding and ended up my opponent for the victory vote. Everyone else was at friendly. Easy win.
 
Congrats on an awesome date and thanks for the writeup. Really nice read and lots of useful information. Maybe next time challenge I will brave the deity games!

Could I trouble you / other readers with a couple of questions that I think (hope) are probably quick for those in the know to answer....

What exactly changes with aggressive AI? I am guessing from what you wrote that it's because they CF much more readily (how much more?) and so build fewer units because they are in war mode for less of the time? I would have expected it to encourage them to build more units in general though, even when at peace...

And... do you know what the distance maintenance formula is? I searched the forums but could only find a LowtherCastle post saying "flat for 33% cheaper distance maintenance". I guess this is perhaps enough information anyway. A lot more than I knew before. :)
 
What exactly changes with aggressive AI? I am guessing from what you wrote that it's because they CF much more readily (how much more?) and so build fewer units because they are in war mode for less of the time? I would have expected it to encourage them to build more units in general though, even when at peace...
A summary of what AggAI does can be found here. What makes AggAI so good for worker stealing is this:
Less likely to end a war when threatening more enemy cities, than own cities are threatened.
The reverse works as well. They are more likely to end a war when you threaten their cities. (Threatening means that you have a unit in a 2 tiles range of their city.) Normally, you would not easily get peace with an AI after stealing a worker on deity or immortal. With AggAI you can usually Cease Fire as soon as they are willing to talk again. De Gaulle will talk almost immediately, which makes him perfect for repeated worker steals. That's one of the reasons why people like to (ab)use him in their HOF games.

And... do you know what the distance maintenance formula is? I searched the forums but could only find a LowtherCastle post saying "flat for 33% cheaper distance maintenance". I guess this is perhaps enough information anyway. A lot more than I knew before. :)
Formula is something like this (simplified):
DistanceMaintenance=maxMaintenance*variousModifiers*PlotDistance/maxPlotDistance

maxPlotDistance depends on worldwrap. For flat maps, it's the distance from the bottom left corner to the top right corner. For cylindrical, it's the distance from bottom left to top center. For toroidal, it's the distance from bottom left to center.

That means distance maintenance for a city x tiles away from your palace on toroidal maps is about double of what it would be on flat with the same distance. For cylindrical world wrap, it's about 50% higher than on flat.
 
Thanks Pollina for the replies and the link to the AggAI post. Very interesting again!

Civ IV has so many options that I never looked at before playing some HOF games. Sooooo much to learn...
 
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