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

That gifting of MechInfs is pretty cool! I think that Saladin is pretty much toast now, he won't be coming after you. Napoleon is a sure bet not to attack you if he stays friendly which you could insure by going with representation. i think some good diplomacy all game long really payed off the last couple rounds. A space race is looking good, as you will get the techs much faster than HC and with the space elevator and a future GA, be able to build the parts in a repectable amount of time.

Masterful manipulation of AI relations. Well done.

My only quibble is with the use of the GE. After getting spanked for doing something similar in ALC games in the past, I now wait to use the GE on the turn where his hammers will ensure the Space Elevator is completed on the next turn, without overflow, since GE hammers don't do that, IIRC. That way if you get beaten to the SE you still have the GE to be used in some other way.

But then I didn't have a close look at the tech board; if no one else has both Robotics and Satellites, I'd say the SE is as good as got.

aelf said:

It's like Berlin in 1947. It's the most natural target for the AI. Anyway, the total defeat of Saladin there is comparable to Stalingrad. Now the Arabs have totally crippled themselves and are most likely unable to gain any advantage in the war, just as I had hoped.

Click to expand...

I just want to say mad mega-props for an excellent historical reference that was also accurately applied to the game situation.

Now, to read page 12 and get back to where I can edit this post with some useful comments.

Edit: Okay, that was a short read. Anyway, great job on the last couple rounds. And Happy New Year, since I'd been MIA for most of the beginning of January. Like Galileo, I liked the gifting of Mech Infantry to Napoleon. I did that once for Ragnar, my vassal, to protect him from Toku, who I'd gone to war with. Gave him two tanks to play with too, and he wound up taking one of Toku's cities for a couple turns (after which I "helped" recover it from Toku again ).

You've definitely got space to look forward to if you keep going. Two suggestions: Spies are a good friend to a space race vic. If you've got the time to produce a couple and send them to "visit" Huayna, you can slow him down to a crawl using your huge GNP lead to sabotage production tiles and slow down the building of any particularly large spaceship part. The other question - could Huayna be goaded into a war with any of his continent-mates? It may not change a lot of things, but it would probably push him to make more units instead of continuing his space race for the few turns you would need to get a comfortable lead. Diplomacy's worked so well for you so far, what are the odds you could make it work for you one last time?

Great job aelf. Congrats on limiting your war efforts post-Russia. Hopefully you feel better about cIV after limiting your war efforts and still having a highly successful game

Great set of turns there aelf. The way you gave war aid to the French without getting directly involved yourself was very neat. I particularly liked the way Saladin's power graph went crashing down, but yours was unaffected despite gifting units away.

A space win should be in the bag from here, especially if you're able to trigger a golden age to race through the ship production. The AI always gets its casings built early and then has to wait an age on the final couple of pieces so I never worry unduly if it gets a head start.

Thanks for the tip, Sisiutil. I could learn more about the proper use of a GE. Well, detailed calculation isn't my forte and I tend to be worried that my timing would be off. But, for now, since nobody has Computers yet, I think we're quite safe.

The aiding of the French was quite a gambit. I don't like the idea of gifting good units to a neighbour, especially one like Napoleon. But dire situations call for dire measures

Anyway, I really feel lucky in this game. There were so many things that could have gone wrong and ruined the game. Still, this game does make me feel better about Civ4. Now, if only I could replicate this offline

PS: That's not saying that the game is won. IMO it's not a certainty. And, btw, we already have spies online on the other continent. Nobody would go to war on the other continent, though.

I've played the next round. I'll post the update as soon as I can, probably within the next few days.

Round 11: 1860AD - 1924AD

Having rush bought to our hearts' content, we switched back to Representation at the beginning of the round:



The Space Elevator would be due in only 7 turns, so it's quite impossible to lose it, especially since nobody had all the required techs. It was better that we start reaccumulating points with Napoleon for having his favourite civic. We still needed this guy firmly on our side. And it turned out that the shared civic bonus was immediately at +6. So, Nappy remembers.

Since we're no longer using US, we went on to research Fibre Optics (which obsoletes the Kremlin). Why not Fission first? Fibre Optics leads to Fusion (and its free GE) after all, and we could potentially benefit from building the Internet. True, it would tie up a productive city for a while, but we needed to wait for the right techs to build the expensive parts anyway. And in the midst of researching all those space techs, half the world could be beelining to Composites, waiting for the chance to build a more modern army with which to crush our peaceful little empire. With the Internet, at least we'd get that tech without having to research it ourselves and we could then begin building a modern army of our own for defense.

Anyway, our spies were already on the other continent. Now they began using our excess income for covert operations to hinder our biggest rival's space program. The first mine went down:



An unguarded coal mine. That was too tempting That delayed a thruster for 1 or 2 turns. And there was this other city that relied on an unguarded copper mine to build a thruster in 20+ turns... After the initial rounds of sabotaging production tiles, our spies started sabotaging the food tiles instead. It's fun to watch those big cities starve down (especially the food-rich capital) and, in that way, lose production And food tiles are rarely guarded.

We got our next GP a few turns into the round:



A GA was a good GP to get at this point. Now, with the Fusion GE that would soon be born, we had all we need to trigger a golden age. The GS could be used to speed up Fibre Optics. It was only by a single turn, but at this stage every turn can count.

Then we saw signs of trouble on the war front. The Arabs captured Rheims, a major French coastal city I didn't see that coming. In the frantic defense of Numidian, it didn't cross my mind that Saladin might land a big SoD from the sea and start conquering Napoleon's 'safe' cities. Napoleon did take it back immediately, but he was going to lose it a second time:



Nappy had no force anywhere nearby that could resist such a stack or retake the city again. Hence, Saladin would gain a coastal foothold in the French portion of the continent, a valuable base for the evidently superior Arab navy and good landing point for future invading stacks. I couldn't let that happen. However, we didn't have any units near enough to relieve Rheims, so I decided that we should simply evict the Arab army:



Besides peace and the immediate removal of Saladin's units from French territory, this deal would also help Nappy by allowing him to build bombers. We are such a friend, aren't we?

And after peace prevailed, we were finally able to get it out of Nappy:



It was a risk, though. We could very well be dragged into a war we didn't want to fight. However, we could use Nappy's help if somebody declared war on us. And I reckoned that the combined power ratings of Nappy and us would make Saladin think twice about attacking the former again.

We researched Fission next, on the way to Fusion. At about this time, we found our sources of oil and alumium sabotaged. It was annoying but not damaging. We could switch the current builds from ships and aircraft to other things in a few cities while we repaired the oil well, and the aluminium mine went up again within that turn. The simple solution was to post some guards on these resources, but I decided to gift Peter an extra workboat that we happened to have, just in case (as you can see, Peter's borders finally enveloped the oil patch). Oil wells take a long time to build.



Embarassingly enough, it turned out that I forgot to give him the required tech for offshore platforms (Plastics) until the end of the round. But we didn't suffer another sabotage incident anyway.

And then we completed a key wonder:



I think it's actually important for this particular space race. HC was quite far ahead, and we might not have enough production to complete all the parts in time without the Elevator.

By then, HC had completed the UN. Guess who was elected Secretary General I decided to call for a diplomatic victory vote, just for kicks:



Well, as expected, we did not win it this time.

I made another tech trade with Gandhi:



We didn't even need it (we have the Eiffel Tower), but we could milk the score a little if we win.

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

[continued from previous post]

HC came knocking again:



That was a sign of trouble brewing on the other continent. I declined. HC remained pleased, though (he did become cautious soon, but that was because he caught one of our spies). War eventually broke out between the Egyptians/Indians and the Incas, and a fierce one at that, with Egypt capturing two major Inca cities. Needless to say, that halted Huayna's spaceship construction, and our spies could essentially cease their sabotage work.

And, as expected, we were the first to discover Fusion:



It's time for a golden age. By now, it's clear that the Internet was no longer necessary, so Moscow switched to building the engine. By the end of the golden age, we should be very close to victory.

We made what was our last tech trade in the game:



At this point, the afore-mentioned war between Ramesses and HC had not begun, so we could use the money to continue our round-the-clock sabotage work. I also wanted to milk the score a little more by getting Fascism. This way, we would probably have all the techs in the game (besides the Future Techs) by the end.

Fast forward a little, we were finally close to it:



We were one turn away from the launch (and one turn from discovering Composites, the last tech). HC, who was the most advanced, still did not have the last space tech he needed:



So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

THE PRESTIGE:





Well, it was quite expected towards the end, but there was a point in the game where I really doubted the feasibility of our path. And I'm sure you guys weren't sure either

Now, to the overview. The power graph for the game:



Notice how HC's power rating went crashing down towards the end. So did the war on the other continent help us win? Well, not really. I'd say since we had the tech lead, HC was in no position to launch before us anyway.

It seems kind of pointless to show the GNP graph again (nothing new there), so here's the production graph:



As you can see, we were also number one in that, ensuring that we could outbuild everybody else, probably even if they had all the space techs as well.



Nice to see Seoul there. And you see Cuzco? That city was size 24 or 25 before our spies moved in.

The final score:



Not that great, but we won without conquering our continent or anything close to that! Financial certainly helped. Protective played a part later in the game, when we used gunpowder units against Saladin, either directly or by proxy (remember the mech infantries?). But I'm still left unimpressed by this trait. Imagine if we had Charismatic instead

Another thing is diplomacy. As you can see, it's absolutely vital for more peaceful games on the higher levels. You need to be able to maintain the balance of power and trade techs with the right people to have any chance of keeping up or surpassing the AIs without doing lots of conquering. In this, you also need some luck. If we had Sisiutil's neighbours of the last ALC, we wouldn't have been able to pull this off.

So, I hope you guys have learned something from this episode. I have. It does not provide a clear answer to whether the game is imbalanced on 2.08, though. It proves myself wrong to some extent, but this is only one out of 3 or 4 games that I have played since installing the new patch. Not easy to draw conclusions based on my own experience. But, going by what others have told me, the balance issue is hard to deny.

And this EMC happens to be the last. It's sad to see it end, but we all have to grow up, right? I'm interested in starting an Immortal Challenge, playing as Aztecs and exploiting their UB as much as possible in a warmongering game (yes, a 180-degree turn). I'll start a thread discussing that soon.

For now, great job, guys! Continue to have fun playing!

Congratulations aelf. This has been a very enjoyable thread and it's good to see it end in a fairly convincing win, especially since you only warred significantly with one rival.

Random settings gave me Monty recently. His UB makes whipping out armies incredibly powerful if you can stomach the MM required for the 5-turn cycle that exploits it most efficiently. It'll be interesting to see if you can work an Oracle CoL slingshot in to get hold of it early on.

aelf, gratz for successful conclusion of this epic game thread!

IMO HC did quite well for Emperor AI, only two parts missing. But I did predict that Ramessess will pwn the other continent before the end, didn't I

GL when you go against the Immortals. I might be around, after all, it's my favorite level

Great game, great thread, and another masterly demonstration of the dipomatic arts.

Masterful play, as always Well done! And, hey, who says you can't win without doing war, war war

Good game. It confirms my belief that one war is almost always necessary to secure enough land (is power). But after that the options open up.

peace,
lilnev

Yay. Nice conclusion to a great game. The diplomacy really taught me something. Can't wait for the IMC Aztecs! Time to get whippin' and warring!

Great Read!!!!!1111oneoneoneone

Can't wait till #5!

Congratulations on another great game. I'm always in awe of your mastery of the diplomatic side of the game.

This game and ALC 11 (Carthage) actually seemed rather similar towards the end to me: a limited war that bought land but did not clear the continent, a game-long lag in power, and a space race win where you (almost) built the Internet.

So you're moving up to Immortal, eh? Sounds like fun. I look forward the first IMC!

Thanks, guys As I said, we were quite lucky too in this game.

The pre-game thread for the Immortal Challenge will be up anytime now.

I am keen to see you play the first IMC. I have moved up to Emperor of late and find I have my hands full although I have now won a couple of games.

I will be particularly interested to learn how you feel immortal differs from emperor.

Go get em tiger!

Congrats on your victory aelf!

One suggestion for your offline games to kick some interest back into civ4: try moving down a level but playing variants. I started playing a Monarch game with Qin (industrious/protective) where I was only allowed to build archery units before granadiers/rifles (cats are allowed for city wall bombard only). I did a Feudalism slignshot for 5xp protective longbows before AD1000 and decalred war on my neighbour. Capturing cities with a LB assult force gives the kind of novelty that is sometimes needed to sustain interest. It will be great when I add some Chokunus in the mix.

There are lots of other fun variants to mix up your civ experience.