The Immortal Challenge 3: The Gathering Storm

Nice win there! I really don't mind that you went for Diplomatic, as I'm experiencing firsthand the difficulty in keeping up with the AI on Emperor. So as soon as you can see a win (and Diplomatic is probably the earliest) I say go for it. Anyway, why am I telling you this? The master of diplomacy strikes again!

Well done again aelf, another fine win where you pulled off an amazing diplomatic victory. I would be interested in the alternative Space Race ending but only if you don't have BtS yet. It would be a better use of your time getting used to the new game. I have only had it one day and it is soooo ... different from Warlords in many key areas.

It might be better to go down a level for the next challenge, unless you familiarize yourself with all the new stuff, although with the AI changes I am not sure there is an easy correspondance between BtS and earlier Civ 4 and Warlords difficulty levels. I suggest you play several private games to be sure before playing another challenge game.

Congrats, nice rushing in the end. Turning the tide has never seemed so easy!

Well, I'm currently playing the bonus space race round.

UncleJJ said:

I suggest you play several private games to be sure before playing another challenge game.

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That shouldn't take too long

Nice game aelf. Sorry I couldn't be around to see it.
So, who's next?!?!

Congrats, well done. You faced quite a few problems this game and overcame them all. Space race seemed easy too at the time you got the diplo win.

Now do Stalin!

Congrats on this fine win. Learned a lot from this game.

Bonus Space Race Round: 1887AD - 1928AD

And so we're back on a last small outing on Warlords with this bonus space race round. I went back to the last save and played from there. Instead of winning through the UN, we did not build the UN this time and aimed instead for a space win.

So we researched Robotics next for the Space Elevator. I did raise the culture slider to 20%, though, since WW was quite serious in some cities. And I didn't think we would lose out to Peter in terms of research because of that. But, who knew, he could simply finish building all the parts ahead of us in the end, since he got several done already (including the Docking Bay, IIRC).

And all the research and culture was draining our coffers dry. I decided to make a deal with Monty to get more gold:



That tech was less costly in beakers than all the other techs except for Mass Media, and I thought there was no harm in giving the Aztec navy some aid in the war against Russia.

Anyway, this war was more eventful than the last, as I have mentioned in the alternate ending. Since the game didn't end so soon this time, I got the chance to hunt some subs down with newly built destroyers. There was even a battleship face-off involving a pair on each side. We prevailed thanks to our Combat 4 battleship from the Nottingham docks (drydock + West Point + 3 GMIs). The other battleship didn't have a hard time thanks to the former's collateral damage. Yes, our navy effectively took control of the seas around our continent.

When Robotics was discovered, I postponed the Apollo Program in Ravenna for a while in favour of the Space Elevator. Peter already had or at least was probably about to have Robotics, so it's not worth the risk delaying. And I sunk both of our GEs ' hammers into the construction:



Yes, I know it's only proper to hurry production to complete the wonder on the next turn, but I figured that this way Peter didn't have a chance at beating us anyway and I was too lazy to do the math

Our GS, meanwhile, went to Ecology, as before:



A few turns later, Monty signed peace with Peter Not wishing to bear the burden alone, I did so too:



At least it's him paying us this time.

With the war over, and unhappiness less of a problem (not much less, though, due to resources becoming obsolete), I decided it was time for a Golden Age, triggered by a GM (which we got like in the alternate ending) and a prophet:



As you can see, we had run out of space techs to research, so we could now lower our science slider and focus on generating lots of gold for sabotage And London was building Hollywood to ease the happiness problems. Rest assured that the city was not out of sync with the spaceship construction.

As expected, we completed the Space Elevator:



We also completed Hollywood in London:



The first movie it released was Monty Python and St. Petersbeard

We also completed Scotland Yard and built as many spies as we could, which we sent to the other continent with our latest GM:



Yup, he will pay for their missions

And here's a look at our progress compared to Peter's after we got the first few spaceship parts done:



Will we be able to beat him to the stars?

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

[continued from previous post]

Our GM hit the Aztec capital for the most lucrative deal:



The loss of the open borders treaty really affected the value of trade missions in Russian cities.

Our spies, meanwhile, went to business.

By now, as you can see, we had no more techs to research. Future tech wasn't so bad since it would allow some of our cities to grow another pop to milk the score

We got another GM as our next GP:



We seemed to be getting a lot of these guys lately, and at a great rate too. So England truly was a nation of shopkeepers Nothing much for this guy to do now, so he lightbulbed two turns of Future Tech.

And then Monty declared on Peter again:



Good one, old dawg! If Peter needed another nail in his coffin, here was one. Although I doubt Monty would actually do much physical damage with that stack he sent. The Aztec asked us to join the war, but we politely declined. See you in space some day, mister!

Anyway, here's our very own masterpiece of destruction:



A starving Moscow deprived of its cows (food) and horses (hammers). A few other cities also suffered from rampant and repeated sabotage

And here's a look at the progress of our space programme compared to Peter's one turn from the launch:



I had assigned Ravenna to build the most expensive part, the SS Engine. Cologne, meanwhile, being another high-hammer city, got to do the third most expensive part, the Stasis Chamber. Casings were done everywhere else. London built the Docking Bay after Hollywood and was a turn faster than Hastings, a relatively productive city, which built the last Thruster.

So we reached Alpha Centauri first:



The future is us!

Here's the power graph for the whole game:



Looks like Peter still prevailed over Monty in the end, due to superior technology.

The GNP graph:



Peter's didn't look too good towards the end.

And production:



And that was why we couldn't lose the space race

London made it into the top 10 cities this time:



Looks like time was all it needed to get up there.

But our score was diminished:



From second in the hall of fame to the fifth, below our Korean win. As they say, time is money.

So, that's all folks! Thanks for your support. See you in the next game soon. I'll post a final game analysis for this one in a few days' time.

Spectacular game, aelf!
Shall be looking forward to BtS challenges!

Seems that the games where majority of opponents are on another continent are easier in respect that they offer more diplomatic maneuverability. Seemed to me that previous loss was largely due to Louis being all happy with himself on his own turf...
Everyone forgive me if this was stating the obvious, I just wanted to say smth conclusive

On a side note: how the hell are cities picked into this top 5? From What I remember, e.g. Berlin has more Wonders and larger pop than, say, Novgorod. Does culture factor in?

Thanks for playing out the alternative ending. Much appreciated and very interesting. You were right to opt for the Diplomatic ending.

Great come back, aelf! Very impressive!

Were you able to get your hands on the expansion yet? I kind of like the Final Frontier Mod, which is quite a bit of fun. It's not as polished as the regular Civ game, but it's still quite enjoyable. I hope the creator continues to work on it, as it's not as fleshed out as it should be.

Cheers!

Fantastic game! Aelf has another legend to tell. Salute to the master

Hamarabi said:

Were you able to get your hands on the expansion yet?

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Yes Give me some time to familiarise, though, especially since I'm busy nowadays. I hope to start a new game on this forum next week.

BTS challenge ? definitely follow...

Overall Game Analysis

What we did right

- Claiming ivory early. Nottingham's spot was little further than I'm usualy comfortable with at that stage of the game, and it meant that we were expanding in two directions, but grabbing it early was important since Caesar was aggressively settling right up to our borders. The ivory allowed us to build war elephants, which were crucial as a counter to Caesar's Praetorians.

- Building research. At one point, this was almost all that kept our research going. Not being shy to do this probably helped us survive the early game despite our less than desirable land.

- Making use of highly promoted Drill crossbows/Redcoats. These really saved our skin during the medieval wars as stack defenders. Their first strikes helped our stack survive as it was moving from one enemy city to another. And these units would later become elite Drill Redcoats that were instrumental in again ensuring stack survival and defeating Bismark.

- Using Nationhood in an extensive way. That helped us defeat Bismark, the superpower of the time with his huge stacks of cavalry. A nice touch was building the Globe Theatre in Rome and settling a GG there, making it a good source of drafted troops that started at level 2.

- Building the Internet. Need I say more? Beelining for and building it allowed us to become the most advanced civ from almost dead last. We also maximised the advantage it gave us by avoiding techs that it would give us and researching those that it would not.

- Good use of diplomacy to achieve victory. We bribed Monty to declare on Peter, joined him and built the UN during the war to win (the diplomatic ending). I'm referring to the second Monty-Peter war, which was initiated by us. Monty asked us to join him and we did and made use of the mutual struggle bonus by quickly building the UN. Sure enough, we got Monty's votes and won.

What could be better

- Not running specialists early enough. Looking back at the early stages of the game, I get the feeling that we didn't start running scientists early enough. If we had gotten a GS early, we might have been able to found Taoism (granted it might be hard to beat the AI's date of 490BC), and the game might have turned out differently since we would then have had a monopoly on religion on our continent.

- Not building enough siege units. I think our war efforts were held up at certain points in the game where we simply ran out of siege weapons since our cities had gone back to civilian builds. Perhaps I could have planned better and arranged for a constant supply of siege weapons to the front to prevent such bottlenecks. It would have saved us some WW and allowed us to get on with teching up earlier and not fall so far behind.

- Better use of religion. The fact that no religion was found on our continent complicated things here, but some religions eventually did spread to our cities from the other continent. Since we didn't research Scientific Method so soon, we could have focused more on building monasteries where we could and training missionaries to spread as many religions as possible to our other cities. This would have had the effect of raising happiness caps after we switched to Free Religion. This might have been quite difficult to accomplish, though, since there were not many spare hammers.

Does anyone have anything to add?

aelf said:

Does anyone have anything to add?

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not a lot, except that you tease like no one else

cabert said:

not a lot, except that you tease like no one else

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I'm afraid the next challenge will be delayed by at least a week, because this @#$! country doesn't have BTS yet. Yeah, I didn't know I lived in the jungle either.

And someone really doesn't like this thread. Let me guess, probably a Unit 'Aggressive-AI-is-the-true-way' Spammer

I've spent the last couple of days reading through your other chalenges aelf, very informative. Thinking about trying a few games on Emperor myself so it makes sense to read up as much as possible about how to survive. Keep up the good work!

At least you haven't got people saying "I'm thinking about unsubscribing from this thread" anymore, like in the first EMC (although acidsatyr one of the early doubters to his credit soon came back with excellent advice and commentary after ranting a bit about your early MM).

It takes a lot of effort and bravery to post your games publicly for all to see.