The Emperor Masters' Challenge 4 (Warlords v.208)

Aelf,

I can see where you're coming from about needing a break or to potentially retire from CIV4. I hate to say it lacks some of the variety of civ 3 and makes me regret giving my copy away to a friend. my last few games all played out the same dispite civ/map differences. the game devolves into tech, war, entrench, rebuild, tech, war etc through distinctive periods of:
pre cats
post cats
post grens
post infantry
post tanks.

over and over and over its always the same. check diplomacy, tech trades, city micro, worker micro, unit ques, army composition, stack orientation blah blah blah.

while your threads rock and keep me interested in the game, I do understand where you're going. how many 5-15 hour games of similarity can any of us take? I'm not as much of an addict as some on here. if this is your last I hope it goes out with a bang, and want to say up front that its been fun!

NaZ

As well as the new "BetterAI" builds to try, there are also different map types. Most of the maps you've used in the EMCs have been 2 continents so it's not surprising the methodology for playing gets repetitive. How about mixing it up a little and trying a Terra, Fractal or Pangea map, or even choosing the shuffle option to really give you a surprise? Mix it up a bit.

How about archipelago? That should be interesting...

I believe the unwavering goal of every AI to win the space race is part of the problem. Also the fact that the AI's seem to love playing nice with each other - for no reason whatsoever contributes to the situtation.

Maybe I've finally settled on what I found fun about Civ4. Competing with a good AI is all fine and well. It does make for a challenge, but it does not make for very interesting games. Like Nazdreg said, I've played long enough to be tired of conventional games. I don't play MP because I know it's going to be an even more extreme version of conventional games. Sure, humans are more unpredictable and there's the adrenaline rush and all, but what is it besides warring and more warring? So what if humans or super AI pose a 'real' challenge to me? I don't want to have to just fight wars in every game. The fact that Civ is called Civ implies that there is another aspect to it, and the sum is why I play this game. When the balance is broken, I don't want to play anymore.

Someone used the analogy of a puzzle game to indirectly criticise my view of Civ in another post some time ago. Now I think he might be right. Maybe to me Civ is just like a puzzle game, where I plan ahead find interesting ways to solve it and don't want to get too bogged down by having to make compromises midway or 11th hour changes. Those are fun too, but when they spoil my 'interesting' plans, they ruin the experience for me. And when I play without making specific plans, I quickly lose interest. This has been happening in my offline games for the past few months.

I'm not saying that we are lost in this game. In fact, most signs point towards relative success so far. But I'm apprehensive about getting bogged down later in the game, due to the number of AI empires that are still intact. Take Saladin and Napoleon. We can befriend the former by adopting Buddhism now, but don't we want to switch to Free Religion later? I'm quite sure that if we don't kill him and he becomes powerful later on (due to the size of his empire) and we no longer adopt his religion, he will give us problems for just minding our own business. Yes, we might not be destroyed, but a protracted conflict would ultimately prevent us from winning the game. The same with Napoleon. Since we're running a CE as a Financial civ and we're going for a space win, we would probably want to switch from Representation (if we ever adopt it) to US, which would make Napoleon a lot less pleased with us. It would have been so much more convenient if we had aimed to kill them both, but we don't want to do the same thing every game, do we? Yeah, these are challenges that this game poses to us, but there's a hair's difference between challenge and frustration. There are some challenges that you can't overcome, and with the new patch, I fear that is the prospect we are faced with.

But, anyway, I am not jumping ship. If it comes to that, it comes to that. In the meantime, the update is coming up.

Anyway, thanks for the overwhelming support and encouragement, guys.

The forums are a bit weird tonight. I hope that doesn't prevent me from posting the update.

May I suggest the Hall of Fame to you?

The goal of Hall of Fame games is to win as fast as possible. You could of course say that this resembles normal civ, but when you play, for example, settler games, and you're trying to get the UN as fast as possible, you'll have to play a whole different game (you often don't need war for example) than in normal emperor/monarch games.

Round 5: 520AD - 1080AD

We started by trading CS to Saladin and Napoleon, as recommended:





The trade with Nappy was a bit crappy, but I'd rather get something out of the tech before the AIs get a chance to trade amongst themselves. At least that gave us a +3 for fair trade from the Frenchman, who was now pleased enough to be willing to declare war on Peter if we gave him Philosophy. I decided not to do so, though. Why give away our advantage?

We could research Paper next and subsequently start on Education, but the prospect of lighbulbing Education with a GS was still distant, as you can see here:



Many turns to the next GS, even if we run 1 or 2 scientists in Seoul in addition to the GL's. We had time, so I decided we should research Machinery first. Might be useful and would open up more techs to trade for.

We declared war on Peter and, several turns later, our troops marched into Moscow:



We paid a heavy price, though. We lost 3 Hwachas, an elephant and an axeman. Moscow was defended by 5 longbows. Good thing I promoted the first two Hwachas with Barrage. I think that helped a little. The dead elephant had 85+% odds, actually. And we had a some reinforcements following our stack, so we weren't holed up in Moscow for too long.

After we finished researching Machinery, I decided not to delay Paper any longer. I thought that, at any rate, it would be good to have Education available for research next.

Anyway, our stack was about to head for Yekaterinburg, when I got cold feet. Napoleon was pleased with us, but he was also pleased with Peter. Saladin was cautious with us and pleased with the Russian. I thought the chances of Peter, who had Theology over the other two, bribing them to attack us were quite high. So I decided to bribe Napoleon with Philosophy. Before that doing that, though, I thought I might as well get a tech from Saladin:



And here comes the bribe:



Well, this way we'd also stir up some trouble amongst the AI civs on our continent.

On the next turn, Saladin completed the Angkor Wat (which we were building in Seoul)

Lessons learned:

1) The AI knows how to use a GE now.
2) If you want any assurance that you can complete a wonder on post-patch Emperor, make sure as far as possible that no AI has the tech required.
3) We shouldn't have tried going wonder-happy, since we aren't Industrious.

IIRC, the 10 turns or so we spent building the Angkor Wat was converted to 141 gold. Well, I guess we would max out our research and simply shoot towards Liberalism with the extra gold.

We captured Yekaterinburg soon after:



More gold for our beeline to Liberalism. IIRC, the assault cost us a Hwacha and an elephant. Our stack had to stay in Yekaterinburg for some time, waiting for more reinforcements.

Despite being pleased and grateful and all, Napoleon demanded tribute from us:



I've given away Philosophy (I wonder if it was the right decision). There was no way I would give him another tech that leads to Liberalism. Anyway, Napoleon was happy enough with us. A small refusal wouldn't matter that much.

Finally, we mustered enough troops to capture St Petersburg:



That removed the heavy cultural pressure on Moscow and Yekaterinburg.

With that, our offensive had officially fizzled out. With our focus on infrastructure and winning the Liberalism race, we were not building enough troops to constantly send to the frontline as reinforcements. Anyway, we've captured all our immediate objectives. All things considered, I decided to negotiate a truce with Peter:



Not a bad deal. No free tech from him, but could we really expect that? I think a second war in the future would be enough to finish him off. For now, we'd take a breather.

[to be continued in the next post...]

Nice work Aelf. It will be interesting to see if we can remain peaceful after wiping out Peter. Maybe you can later convince Napoleon to go to war with Saladin. That would help a lot...I'm worried though that you are the meat in the sandwich between Napoleon and Saladin...

What do you think about my idea to try something kinda off the wall next game (if you start another one)? Maybe something really non-traditional would shake things up a bit for you

[continued from previous post]

The peace treaty ended the effects of WW, which were becoming quite apparent. I had been forced to whip a couple of times to keep unhappiness in check. Now our cities could grow again.

Anyway, soon after, we completed Education without burning a GS on it. With 100% commerce going to research all the way, that was by no means a surprise. With that crucial tech in the bag, we were ready to trade Paper away, so I looked around for some bargains. Despite having lost half his empire or more to us, Peter was still amiable enough to trade:



Strange fellow and an excellent opportunity for us.

I also traded with Saladin:



On the next turn, I traded with Peter again:



And I sold Theology to Napoleon:



By the end of this flurry of tech trades, we had more than enough money to keep our research at 100% till we get Liberalism.

Our next GS was finally born:



A tad too late, don't you think? Well, he can lightbulb Printing Press, which is good considering we are running a CE.

1 turn before we discover Liberalism, I stopped playing. I think we nailed it, guys. What should we pick as our free tech, though? We can trade for Optics and get Astronomy. But for what? Alternatively, we can take Nationalism.

If we want to take Astronomy, we can make this trade:



This might be a good idea even if we don't want to get Astronomy now.

If we choose Nationalism, Nappy is willing to trade marble:



What's the significance of this, you ask? Well, we can build the Taj Mahal. Maybe a golden age would do us some good and give us an extra edge, now that we've failed to get the Angkor Wat.

The tech situation on our continent:



We have Education on everyone. That's about it. We can already see Saladin's potential power. This guy's no joke. He has a huge empire down south. Like I mentioned earlier, he might spell trouble in the future.

The power graph:



Well, Peter's having a small rebound. That might mean he won't be crushed and become Napoleon's vassal. That's a good thing. Part of the reason why I didn't want to continue with the joint war effort was the fact that Peter might just capitulate to Napoleon instead of to us. That wouldn't bring us into a war with France, but it would still be disastrous for us.

And here's the map of the continent:



As you can see, there are some Russian cities that we might like to take in the future. Especially Yaroslavl. St Petersburg just went into revolt a few turns earlier, thanks to that city's culture. What's up with that, anyway? I thought conquered cities can't flip back to your enemy? Is this another one of those screwed up changes they implemented with the patch?

I have mixed feelings about this round. Where do we go from here? Share your thoughts.


PS: Saladin captured the barb city to the south while we were fighting in Russia, so it's goodbye to 7-resource super city

Nice work Aelf. My opinion: Make the trade with Saladin, go for astronomy.

When you can, take the rest of the Russian's decent cities: That one on the island is annoying...what to do about it? Gotta get the cultural pressure off St. Pete's. Yes, cities can flip back. I've always had that happen, so I don't think it's anything new.

I think the primary goal for the rest of this game should be as follows: Try and get relations such that Nappy can be bribed into attacking Saladin. S's empire is large and scary-looking, but a war will slow him down. Start building good relations with other continent (hence why I suggest astronomy, they'll be visiting you soon). Crank infrastructure and tech like a madman giving you enough to consistently bribe the AI into war.

My .02$

It would be nice to get Napoleon to declare on Saladin. If you make the trade and take Astronomy, I believe you could offer him enough techs to get him to do it (I'm assuming Saladin is his worst enemy based on border tension and the fact that he seems to consider Peter a friend). He is a razeaholic too, so he'll pile up the negative bonuses with Saladin.

Darrell

What about keeping Saladin happy? Saladin might not be weakened that much by a war with Nappy and we don't want an angry ogre as our neighbour in the future.

futurehermit said:

What do you think about my idea to try something kinda off the wall next game (if you start another one)? Maybe something really non-traditional would shake things up a bit for you

Click to expand...

I really have no time for a concurrent thread

Nice work aelf. My vote is for Nationalism... I wonder why, do I need to explain ?

I agree that bribing Nappy to fight Saladin would be excellent. And it'll only give you -1 with Saladin. If you're able to take Peter's remaining continental holdings, you should have plenty of land to outrace Saladin. Maybe even if you don't, but it would be safer to secure the extra land.

Here's an alternative to Astronomy: Nationalism->Constitution->Democracy. If you're going to demonstrate the power of cottages, early Emancipation can be amazing. Plus it'd be a bit different. When's the last time you had Democracy before Gunpowder?

Speaking of cottages, how many workers do you have? Seoul is still under-built -- I'd much rather be growing a cottage than working a basic coastal tile -- and the new acquisitions naturally have too many farms. I think 6 workers would be pretty minimal at this point, and a few more would make me happier.

Well done so far, and I hope you re-discover joy in the game. I've reached the conclusion that the first war is essentially non-negotiable, and there's no point in complaining about it, but that the decision tree opens up after that. You do need to fight for your initial land, but it doesn't have be war throughout.

peace,
lilnev

p.s. Oh yeah, to keep a city from flipping, station more troops in it.

aelf said:

What about keeping Saladin happy? Saladin might not be weakened that much by a war with Nappy and we don't want an angry ogre as our neighbour in the future.

Click to expand...

That's always possible, but I think it is more likely Napoleon will raze one or more cities and forever be Saladin's worst enemy. If the war does last it will also slow them both down a bit, which should help.

Darrell

1) The AI knows how to use a GE now.
2) If you want any assurance that you can complete a wonder on post-patch Emperor, make sure as far as possible that no AI has the tech required.

Click to expand...

Damn skippy it does. I was building something, Versailles I think, and had three turns left to completion. So I trade the tech to get myself back to tech parity with Mansa, the leading AI, figuring he couldn't catch me in 3 turns when he only just got the technology to build the wonder in the first place. Next turn, I get a message that Mansa has completed it. I have no idea how long that GE was hanging around, but the AI picked the perfect time to burn him.

I'm pretty sure this wasn't even Emperor - it was Monarch I think (whatever's the next step up from Prince, I'm blanking on it right now).

Well, gotta get back to the rest of your round, aelf - I just saw that point you made and figured it deserved to be repeated.

Heh. Peter is Taoist, to which you could convert and get chummy with him. Too bad that would tick off the biggest powers on your continent, who are Buddhist. This reminds me of my games--I keep attacking the civs I should be friends with!

I wouldn't cry too much over Angkor Wat--I'm not sure why you were amped on it in the first place. Running priest specialists doesn't strike me as meshing with your techmongering goals in this game. You were better off failing and getting the gold to run research artificially high.

Make the trade with Sally and select Astronomy from Liberalism. Then you can build Observatories for even better research, along with those wonderful Seowons thanks to Education. Resource trades with the other continent for GPT will further finance your research.

I really think you should have been running science specialists in Seoul to leverage the GL further. Did you put the National Epic there, or do you have a GP farm in mind? I'm quite fond of the GL+NE+Oxford combination, especially in the capital under Bureaucracy.

Your military situation has me concerned. You're very low on the power graph compared to the two Buddhist empires to your south. I really think you should convert to Buddhism ASAP if you want to avoid a jihad being declared on you. After Liberalism & Astronomy, I'd prioritize Gunpowder and Chemistry. You can then use Grenadiers to finish off Peter and cement your ownership of the northern third of your continent, and they're a good unit for defense as well.

(If you think you can stay peaceful with Nappy and Sally, make a detour to Nationalism for the Taj and a GA to get your UB and Observatories in place, and maybe some military too.)

In my experience, Saladin will be content to co-exist with you; Napoleon will not. He'll be looking to expand, he'll check yours and Saladin's position on the power graph, and he'll head north. This will likely happen once he has Military Tradition for Cavalry. You need to be prepared for that. I was going to recommend settling the GS, but maybe you should pop him for Printing Press to get closer to Rifling. You could tech peacefully for the rest of the game once Peter is done, but you'll need a substantial military, so make those techs and their units a priority.

What victory condition are we working towards? Space Race? We need to start thinking about what we need to do for that now. (Yes, says the guy who usually doesn't decide on a victory condition until late in the game.)

EDIT: I'm not as sure as everyone else about getting Nappy to fight Sally. Napoleon will likely win and become the 800 lb. gorilla on your continent. You could end up warring with him for the rest of the game as a result.

Hey there, Aelf! Sorry to hear about your woes of repetition and frustration. I can certainly relate with being burned out on games. It just isn't fun anymore, when that happens. Not to mention, the amount of work, that is involved in writing a report for each round of turns. It can be very time consuming and exhausting, even overwhelming, if you have a lot going on in your life. It's just too much! I commend you for your relentless efforts and loyalty to your readers!

I must admit that I got burned out on a few games in the past, however, when I then quit for a few months and returned afterward, I was back to enjoying it immensely. I would play for hours and hours and remember why that game was so much fun when I first got it.

At any rate, if you think you can exist peacefully with Saladin and a war with Napoleon is unavoidable, you should bribe the latter to declare on the former and then back stab him. You and Saladin should be able to cut Napoleon down to size and then get peace for the rest of the game. This tactic looks good on paper, at least. LOL

Good luck with your decision and I would like to add that I have enjoyed reading your threads a great deal. My advice is to take a break for a while and try something else. M2TW is a good game, similar to this and is worth a try. Even though, it has a few bugs, the up coming patch should fix most of them.

Cheers!

Hamarabi

aelf said:

What about keeping Saladin happy? Saladin might not be weakened that much by a war with Nappy and we don't want an angry ogre as our neighbour in the future.



I really have no time for a concurrent thread

Click to expand...

No, no, I was talking about a subsequent game, not a concurrent one I'm no sadist, lol

I don't think Napoleon would defeat Saladin. Saladin IS protective afterall. At the very least, it would really slow Nappy down and cost him a lot to take out Saladin. At that point you should be really ahead in tech, able to handle whatever he throws at you.