The Immortal Challenge 1: Apocalypto

I can see this adventure ended. Congrats. I will follow next chalenge with more enthusiasm.

Thanks, guys! I couldn't have done it without your help.

carl corey said:

One question: did I understand well that you voted for Augustus for Diplo victory? Why?

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Sorry, I didn't make it clear. My brain wasn't working too well - posting late in the night as usual I voted for Augustus to be Sec-Gen, just so that we could start passing resolutions, such as compulsory Free Religion just to give Mehmed another kick on the bottom

And, yes, I forgot to comment on the effect of the great war between Mehmed and the rest of the continent on the respective power graphs. Truly, no one escape unscathed, although Mehmed did eventually regain his strength and more. On hindsight, this was a good move.

The overall analysis of the game is coming up in a while.

Brilliant late game. I'll admit that at the time the other continent was revealed I didn't think you were going to win this one at all, let alone with so much time to spare.

Overall Game Analysis

I'm making a point to provide a proper game analysis from now on to help us get a better perspective of the game as a whole and draw lessons from it.

How did we win?

We began by building an Oracle to grab CoL early for Sacrificial Altars, which enabled us to whip at tremendous efficiency. And then we did attacked the French with chariots and Jaguars (who demonstrated their worth as fast-moving attackers with Woodsman II in this jungle-heavy map), exploiting Louis' delay in hooking up strategic resources. The speed of our invading armies also meant that we could get to the first few French cities before Louis could get reinforcements there. Once these cities have fallen, the French were severely weakened, and the other cities were not difficult to take later on with traditional methods.

This rush (although it was late by normal standards) ultimately gave us enough land to work with (also by 'sealing off' the free territory north of us), so that even when we were far behind in technology, cottaging up and good tech trading eventually allowed us to catch up. Beelining to Democracy and adopting Emancipation to quickly grow our mass cottages proved to be game-winning, as it saw our economy skyrocket to first place. Free Speech also helped with the extra commerce from towns.

In the late game, we built the SoL and ran Representation throughout to keep our powerful southern neighbour, Augustus, happy. This also boosted our research with all the free beakers from specialists. Adopting Mercantilism, since foreign trade routes were not worth that much anyway, added to this effect. Good relations with Augustus was supplemented by fomenting strife on the other continent to keep their attentions away from us and set them back in terms of research, while we raced with Augustus to launch the spaceship. Building the Internet finally allowed us to surpass Augustus in terms of technology and win the space race.

What we did right

• Getting Sacrificial Altars asap by grabbing CoL early with the Oracle.
  
• Attacking Louis when he only had archers with a fast-moving army (chariots and Woodsman II Jaguars).
  
• Beelining to Democracy.
  
• Pursued techs beneficial for tech trading when we were trying to catch up.
  
• Building the Internet: allowed us to gain important techs while spending time researching other techs that we needed.
  
• And, last but not least, good diplomacy (such as switching and staying in Representation to keep Augustus happy) to keep us from being attacked when we were much weaker than all the others.

What we could improve on

• Lightbulbing: we didn't use scientists in the early part of the game, which would have generated GS's for lightbulbing. This might have prevented us from falling so far behind. We assigned priests instead, but two shrines by mid game are too many.
  
• Settled cities late: we could have settled some of the northern cities earlier to start developing them and make use of the commerce and production they would have given us.
  
• Whipping: the whipping strategy wasn't perfect in this game, as I was unfamiliar with the Altar-altered conditions. Could have whipped a bit more.

Anything else you want to add?

dont forget on the "What we did good" list: Awesome dimplomacy to keep us alive

My accolades come late, but they come nonetheless. Impressive!
I admit I would have quit at the sight of another continent being eras ahead...
aelf, you must give us another one!
I have been following this challenge with almost as big an interest, as I've been reading G.R.R.Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" of late

Well played aelf!

I think you probably did a bit too much slaving (just because you can whip every 5 turns doesn't mean you should) and it cost you in terms of economy, which then led to late expansion.

But the game is a good demonstration of the "land is power" principle - get up to twice the AI size and it's easier than you'd think to catch up and win.

aelf said:

Sorry, I didn't make it clear. My brain wasn't working too well - posting late in the night as usual I voted for Augustus to be Sec-Gen, just so that we could start passing resolutions, such as compulsory Free Religion just to give Mehmed another kick on the bottom

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Phew, I thought you lost it there! Actually I kind of figured what you were saying but just wanted to be sure.

I don't have much to say about your analysis, just that I've also noticed that quite often two or more shrines aren't that much better than one - if they're not captured, that is. It's pretty costly to dedicate more than one city to missionary spamming unless you have a huge empire, or bad cities with nothing better to build.

Good job , and let's see the next!

Nicely done Aelf, and thanks for the thread. Hope you're not too burned out to do it again soon.

Congrats Aelf, an thanks for another very enjoyable, inspiring thread.

flamingzaroc121 said:

dont forget on the "What we did good" list: Awesome dimplomacy to keep us alive

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Haha. Hmm. I kinda took that for granted But I shall add it.

uberfish said:

I think you probably did a bit too much slaving (just because you can whip every 5 turns doesn't mean you should) and it cost you in terms of economy, which then led to late expansion.

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I thought the criticism at that time was I didn't use the whip as much as I could have. I think there was a period where this was true. Maybe the less-than-efficient amount of whipping had to be compensated by a longer period of whipping, which led to the slowdown you mentioned.

uberfish said:

But the game is a good demonstration of the "land is power" principle - get up to twice the AI size and it's easier than you'd think to catch up and win.

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I think this game actually debunked that notion. We were twice the size of Rome, that's true, but we were only slightly bigger than the Ottoman Empire (and later actually smaller), and yet the latter was not even close to us or to Rome in terms of technology towards the end. I think the AI tendency the farm over its cottages after Biology caused this. Of course, the war helped too. I'd say don't give up if you're not twice the size of the AI. You can still turn things around.

Anyway, I'm starting the pre-game thread for the next Immortal Challenge.

Congrats on your victory aelf

One minor point: being religious, I would have swtiched to Universal Sufferage during the golden age. Towns would then give 2 hammers, booosting production dramatically. Research would suffer, but I see that you were researching Flight at the time, so I presume you already had your space race techs. At that stage diplomacy with Augustus would not have mattered as much and you could have shaved a turn or two off building those final space ship parts.

But that is a minor point on a game well played.

I think the "DO NOT SWITCH CIVICS DURING A GOLDEN AGE" thing is so ingrained in us we tend to forget it doesn't matter when you're spiritual. I know I have forgotten some times.

carl corey said:

I think the "DO NOT SWITCH CIVICS DURING A GOLDEN AGE" thing is so ingrained in us we tend to forget it doesn't matter when you're spiritual. I know I have forgotten some times.

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Even if you weren't spiritual, I think it might be worth switching before triggering the GA. Have to count up the towns to decide if it's worth it.

Not sure about this but *I think* in Civ4 you can revolt to new civics during a GA and not lose productive GA turns (ie, anarchy turns don't count towards GA turms).

Can anyone confirm or deny this? (This was certainly not the case in Civ3.)

Godel said:

One minor point: being religious, I would have swtiched to Universal Sufferage during the golden age. Towns would then give 2 hammers, booosting production dramatically. Research would suffer, but I see that you were researching Flight at the time, so I presume you already had your space race techs. At that stage diplomacy with Augustus would not have mattered as much and you could have shaved a turn or two off building those final space ship parts.

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Good point. Didn't think about that. By then I had given up the game as won