Dhoom 12-23-2011 1:27
Typical AP cheese (cheese I think is used since it sounds like "cheap" or "cheat" but isn't quite cheating, just abusing a poorly-designed game mechanic) works best if you can switch State Religions.
Here, I see us doing some variant of it:
Hinduism is our State Religion but we want the AP to be built in a different, poorly-spread Religion, such as Christianity. So, we generate a Great Engineer (Oracle Metal Casting for a whipped Forge) and gift it to an AI, along with gifting them Theology and Christianity.
Gifting them Christianity would imply spreading it via Missionaries or gifting a City with Christanity in it. The AI just needs to be running Christianity (or a poorly-spread Buddhism or a poorly-spread Judaism) as their State Religion, and whatever State Religion they are running at the time of the AP's completion will be the AI's Religion.
We would then need to conquest the AP so that we could become the Resident through ownership of the AP.
The idea would be to have as many AIs running Hinduism as their State Religion as possible while giving them only a bit of Christianity.
It does get a lot trickier if we are isolated, but a Great Engineer and Missionaries can be transported via Caravels (Optics)... yet I guess if we are 100% isolated we'd still need Astronomy to capture the AP City.
If we aren't COMPLETELY isolated, then the idea will work... if we are completely isolated, that might be the only case where it would be worth it to go for a different victory condition, since we'd need to tech up to Astronomy ANYWAY and just going for Domination might be easier in such a case.
I haven't looked too closely at the game's settings, but no Vassals and no City Razing will make a military game tough and will make Domination seem more realistic than Conquest... I mean, you can't "not" capture the Cities, so you'd probably better plan for a Domination economy that can withstand keeping a ton of Cities.
At least with no Vassals, we shouldn't have to worry about Colonial Maintenance Costs, if I recall correctly.
Going for the UN instead of the AP is unlikely to be faster, and with military victories potentially being challenging, an AP win will probably be our best bet.
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bbp 12-23-2011 1:48
Thanks for the lesson.
I mean, the thing about this is that it needs to be decided fairly early. Correct? Committing to a GE and self-teching Theo early are big investments.
So, once again, early Demo reading and exploration are quite important, I guess.
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LC 12-23-2011 4:56
I'm thinking neil might have set this one up for cultural.
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ZPV 12-23-2011 8:14
Hi guys.
The settings are intriguing. From the preview text at the start, I suspect we are isolated. The Polytheism requirement suggests a settler-first opening to me. Else possibly settling on the stone and building stonehenge for an ultra-quick GP (although I doubt this is better than a settler).
For an AP win, we either need someone else to vote for us, or else someone else be the AP resident and they call the religious victory resolution. We'll have to see, but I don't think neil will have made it easy to spread a religion to everyone - possibly even selecting zealot leaders who favour Theology.
How soon to we have to commit to one path or other? I think we at least have time to clear the basic techs, and see if there are nearby rivals.
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Mitch 12-23-2011 12:14
I've never won an AP victory. I recall reading a spoiler in a BOTM game about a year ago where Jesusin had a very early (i.e. BC years) AP win. If we think this may be the way to go, I think we all need to understand the mechanics (it appears that some of us already do). I'll have to dig into it and see what I can find out.
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bbp 12-23-2011 12:18
ZPV: "The settings are intriguing. From the preview text at the start, I suspect we are isolated."
I expect us to be completely isolated for now. With stone, marble and PHI an isolation game is quite fun.
ZPV: "The Polytheism requirement suggests a settler-first opening to me. Else possibly settling on the stone and building stonehenge for an ultra-quick GP (although I doubt this is better than a settler)."
Why? Can't a fast worker climb up a hill with a pickaxe?
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ZPV 12-23-2011 12:55
@MB: yes, we could settle on one of the hills and build a worker in 10 turns, but spending its first ~11 turns mining hills isn't my idea of productive - the whole reason we build a worker first is to improve food so we can grow.
Worker first isn't completely out the window, but a 17-turn settler with the religion possibly founded in the second city is very tempting, giving us a production advantage early on (especially if we found cities on the stone and the marble), making it easier to build explorer/fogbusters, etc.
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LC 12-23-2011 13:13
I was thinking:
0. Probably settle on marble since it has so much river, although Neil probably made some trade-offs.
1. BUild settler + research Poly to (1t) then research agri (partial)
2. Settle on other rock, then complete Poly then agri.
3. Build 1 or two settlers, etc.
Poly will take 12-13t depending on whether we have a 3f-h1c tile next to the marble. Then agri takes another 10t or less, so the worker isn't desparately late and the second worker or build comes radically soon.
Then there's this from the King of Cultural:
QUOTE=Lexad (
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?entryID=14527 )
"If the mine does not contain gold or gems - well, that's the hint for you it ain't worth working."
I'm not saying we're definitely going cultural. Obviously AP can be faster under the right conditions, but I don't see why we would build a worker first just so it can mine hills. If you look at the common denominator for how the Ducks outplay us in every opening, it's simple: faster settling.
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bbp 12-23-2011 13:15
How long is Poly-Agri? 20-ish turns or so?
Cities on both stone and marble right away sounds kinda appealing, sure. Assuming there's more food available beyond the corn, ofc.
Edit: xpost w LC
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bbp 12-23-2011 13:18
What's with the partial Poly research? For holy city? Are we even allowed to do that?
Edit: I guess we are, provided we manage to found it.
Edit2: It's a pretty significant delay, though. We'll take 17t for the settler build + 2t to settle + 1t to settle Delhi + 1t to finish research. That's 21t for an Emperor AI to nab it.
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LC 12-23-2011 13:21
As for our slow beginnings and playstyle, I think we should just focus on fastest REX in the beginning. To me, settling on both rocks is a no-brainer, regardless of how much food those sites have. In my limited HOF experience I always started on 3h hills and got first place. Having two such cities to start out is double orgasm. Just try out a game with these settings and two such hills 4 tiles apart. It's like you're cheating.
Throw in the quick border expansion for the second city and it's freaky.
xpost w/bbp: I say we just go for it and if we miss Hinduism, big deal, we quit. I don't think it's likely to happen.
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LC 12-23-2011 13:29
I don't believe any AI starts with Mysticism, btw. Whether they choose Meditation or Polytheism is partially on the RNG, so theoretically every team could miss it since the AIs are going to start a turn sooner and pay less for it on Emperor...
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ZPV 12-23-2011 13:31
It's possible to choose the AIs' tech paths in debug mode, although I don't know if neil will have done this, and they don't always stick to it.
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LC 12-23-2011 13:34
Wouldn't they have to have settled first?
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ZPV 12-23-2011 13:38
No - there's a keyboard shortcut to switch player - I'll remember it once I play around a bit, whence you can go into the Science Advisor to do it
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bbp 12-23-2011 13:38
No, I don't think they start with Myst, but 20+ turns seems like enough for Myst-Poly. I don't see the point, tbh. We can build a monument in 8t minimum, maybe even 5-6t. That's a T36-38 border pop. We won't even have a single worker 'till T27, which is corn on T32, plus there will be other improvements in the capital. Obviously it's better to get the free border pop and maybe even two workers, but I don't think it's worth risking an instant loss.
Hindu doesn't start with a missionary, right? It's been a while since I founded it.
xpost w both
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LC 12-23-2011 15:59
I tested Hinduism. I got a T11 completion with an AI starting with Mysticism. I got a T16 completion starting without, so I guess that plan is out of the question. We can't assume Neil doctored the tech paths. We can assume that he tried all the standard possible variants that teams might try to see if any AIs get Hinduism before us using the random seed in the REAL SAVE. We'll have to accept it landing in our capital.
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Dhoom 12-23-2011 23:19
As for Hinduism, no team really SHOULD risk not beelining Polytheism. The potential gain over other teams isn't worth the risk of losing the game--at least if you beeline it and an AI founds it, Neilmeister would likely take pity on said team, but if you don't beeline it, he'll be more than happy to laugh at said team ending up in last place.
If we are isolated, an AP win could still work, but it would be a lot harder. In that case, I think that we'd just build a Hindu AP, hope that the other Religions spread really well, and then try not to meet any of the AIs until within a few turns of each other, when we already have 3 Hindu Missionaries on Caravels and some Caravel-chains or at least partial chains set up... the idea is that you don't want to wait too long for Heathen Religions to kick in.
We wouldn't necessarily need to get a Great Engineer, but it is a useful Wonder to use a Great Engineer on, since it's a Wonder that won't benefit from Stone/Marble/Copper/Gold/etc, so you will get the full value out of the Great Engineer no matter how many Wonder-build-speed Resources you already have access to.
Also, you get free Hammers from the AP Religion's Temples and Monasteries, meaning that you can spend the cost of the AP in terms of Hammers into Temples and Monastaries and start getting a lot of free Hammer output everywhere. Such an approach would still be relatively compatible with a Cultural Victory, as one of the primary bottlenecks in a Cultural Victory is getting sufficient Hammer output in your 3 Legendary-to-be Cities.
If we can spread Hindu Missionaries quickly after meeting many AIs, we might only see -2, -3, or -4 from Heathen Religion penalties... which is still steep to overcome... probably what's harder is requiring Astronomy before being able to gift Resources, meaning no bonus for shared Resources.
In such an isolation game, we'd probably still have an easier time with a different Victory Condition--the beauty of the AP cheese comes in if we are able to get AIs to convert to Hinduism while having the AP Religion be in a different Religion, and the only way to make such a strategy really work is to have an AI convert to Christianity (or a different Religion), build the AP, and then capture the AP from said AI.
Since we'd need Galleons to capture an overseas AI's City, the cheese part won't work if we're isolated, so for an isolation game we really should pursue a different Victory Condition.
I agree that the setup seems to favour a Cultural Victory and if we are isolated then this point will be very true. One thing that will hurt is not having access to the AIs' Resources, which is one factor that normally powers you through a Cultural Victory, since it's all about getting 3 large, productive Cities, and Happiness + Healthiness Resources help a lot toward that goal.
Neilmeister did say that he wouldn't be as generous as last game in terms of Resources, so going for Cultural without Astronomy may not actually be a winning path, and if we have to get Astronomy anyway, then the only major advantage to going for Cultural is that you don't have to deal with having no Vassals and needing to keep every AI-built City in wartime.
Such a scenario could still end up being best won by war, sad to say.
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LC 12-25-2011 5:10
Maybe this SG is all about RV after all:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php...720642&postcount=72
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Dhoom 12-26-2011 1:07
The title of this SGOTM is also not-so-cryptically called "The Missionary."
Regardless, if we want a strategy that we're just going to work toward, we could aim to go for an Apostolic Palace Victory from Turn 0...
That said, it will be pretty tough to pull off if we are isolated, but by the time that we find that fact out, we could feasibly still switch course to a different Victory Condition--or else we could just stick to going for an AP win even if it turns out not to be the fastest Victory Condition possible, so as to stick with the theme of picking a path ahead of time and focusing most of our discussions around that specific path.
Alternatively, we could do the same for a Cultural Victory (i.e. aim to go Cultural from Turn 0, but I'm pretty convinced that doing so will not win us a set of Gold Laurels).
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LC 12-26-2011 4:23
For an isolated start, I'm thinking the fastest RV would be:
0. Explore to find AIs and coastal settling sites, especially east and west.
1.a. Oracle Theology, build AP (Hindu).
1.b. Beeline Writing>Optics with GS bulbing.
1.c Settle at least 1 coastal city east and west, to whip caravels.
2. Insta-meet AIs with caravels+scouts/HinduMisses.
3. Select an AI-friend who will vote for us and build plusmods. This must be someone who will switch to Free Religion when possible, so preferably didn't found a religion.
4. Beeline Liberalism (more bulbing) and gift to our AI-friend.
Did I miss anything here?
Testing isolated starts is probably the key here, but I'm thinking the only way to prevent RV from winning is to wall-in some AI in an isolated area. I doubt Neil is interested in doing that, because he was proud that three different VCs took awards, so he's probably looking for VC-competitive scenarios. A wall-in guarantees that cultural wins if someone starts it soon enough.
It does seem, on the other hand, that he's gone out of his way to impede military VCs, giving RV a chance. I think the Hindu requirement is an attempt at making cultural competitive. No Brokering may help Cultural since that's a beeline that kind of off the AI tech path, so it's a bit solo anyway.
I think isolated RV is going to be faster than Cultural, because Cultural also goes for Liberalism and then still has 20 or more turns afterwards to spam culture.
Thoughts?
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Dhoom 12-26-2011 13:56
Normal Speed: No bonus to warring but also no real disadvantage to warring. Good timing is pretty important for a Religious Victory.
No City Razing: Now that I think about it, it's not really all that harder for the top teams. It's only really going to be harder for the middle-of-the-pack teams that tend to get started on their warring later. A military victory could still take the Gold here.
City Flip After Conquest: Will be a pretty much meaningless setting in terms of the game.
Aggressive AI: Unlike Vanilla Civ 4, the AIs don't hate you any extra, so no real penalty for Religious or Diplo Victories. I'm not convinced that it helps much, but I forget what it does in BtS... does it simply make an AI more likely to build a unit? If so, it could HURT the AIs relative to a top warring team, as the AIs will be burdened with additional units, which could slow down their research rate. Once you get warring momentum, as long as there are no Longbowmen, it doesn't REALLY matter if AI Cities are defended with 2 units versus 5 units, as you'll have Collateral Damage anyway and your competition (the other teams) will be facing the same issue.
No Tech Brokering: One way to look at it is that Cultural and Religious Victories involve beelines, but so does an Astronomy military game. Either way, you're beelining techs. All that this setting will really serve to do is slow down the AIs and make it harder to support each other (there being no way for them to realistically bribe each other to go to war with us). If anything, this setting will extend the era of Archers, making a militaristic Victory even easier... it's like giving the 'Ducks the advantage of backwards-AIs that we worked so hard to get in SGOTM 14, but they would get said advantage for free.
No Vassal States: Makes Conquest under the "No City Razing" more challenging, but doesn't really make Domination any harder. In fact, it can be said to make Domination easier as you won't have to worry about facing off against an AI Superpower. In SGOTM 14, this option made sense, since each AI Team was already a Superpower. Here, other than stopping chaining capitulations, this setting will only serve to make the militaristic game LIGHTYEARS easier: NO COLONIAL MAINTENANCE for the "No City Razing" option makes the game a lot easier and, as I said, no AIs teaming up with each other leaves all of the AIs weak and vulnerable... and with Domination, you can pick and choose your targets.
Unrestricted Leaders: I didn't see this setting earlier but unlike the Random Personalities, it doesn't really make Religious or Diplo Victories any harder, since you will still know the personality of each AI. It is feasible that "tough combos" could have been made, by combining strong Leader Traits with strong Unique Units, but even then, it's still just the AIs that we're talking about here, not fellow competitors in a multiplayer game.
8 AIs: Conquest gets harder but Domination gets easier, as we'll have EVEN MORE juicy AI capitals (with extra Resources, extra Buildings, extra settled Great People/Academies, etc).
Neilmeister DID make Domination tougher last game by adding in clumps of Peaks, but he would be unlikely to make such a Victory Condition unwinnable, either.
The must-be-Hindu restriction seems to serve two purposes:
a) Delay the time when teams can start to differentiate themselves by picking a good selection of early techs
AND
b) Make Religious and Diplo Victories HARDER
I don't see this restriction really messing up militaristic games--you won't expect to do much trading if we're isolated and end up teching up to Optics or Astronomy before we can meet any of the AIs--at most, the AIs will not trade with you and you can simply get techs by declaring war and demanding techs as part of the peace deal after leaving them with their Tundra Cities.
There is a heck of a lot of trickiness and randomness in going for a Religious (or even a Diplo) Victory when being locked into a Religion, not even being able to switch to No State Religion. In other words, these Victory Conditions have a big disadvantage.
However, Conquest and Domination Victories aren't really handicapped and are likely to be easier than normal due to:
a) backwards AIs
b) AIs that won't be able to support each other
c) more juicy AI capitals to capture (helps Domination more than Conquest as Conquest is balanced out by needing to capture additional junky Cities from additional AI players)
If we learn Theology, won't Great Scientists be wanting to Lightbulb Paper instead of down the Astronomy path? I'm not sure if we can get Optics or Machinery, but I seem to recall Paper having a very high Lightbulbing preference, so building the Apostolic Palace could actually mess up our Lightbulbing of naval techs.
If we're isolated, we will almost certainly have a faster game going for Domination than any other Victory Condition.
The Religious Victory possibility could come in if we can trick an adjacent AI to build the Apostolic Palace for us in a different Religion than Hinduism--but even doing so is tricky as said AI might prefer to build the Hagia Sophia, meaning that we'd have to build that Wonder and other Wonders unless we had an AI with a high Religious flavour for their personality that might be inclined to build the Apostolic Palace even if other Wonders are available. I.e. To make my cheese trick work, we might have to spam a lot of Wonders. So, even then, Domination might be the optimal path.
The only real trick is whether there are a ton of Peaks that can't be settled, making achieving the Land Area condition harder, but then any team that goes for the same Victory Condition would also be similarly handicapped.
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ZPV 12-26-2011 14:21
If we're isolated:
Cultural will be slow due to non-spread of religion.
Religious could be difficult due to Theocracy being available before we can infect AIs with Hinduism.
It also takes time after first contact to build up relations. (That's why that quick speed gauntlet LC linked took until 400BC, when on epic 1500BC is possible, and 2000BC on marathon)
It might not even be possible, if there is enough religious hatred + worst enemy negmods.
Diplomatic suffers the same fate, except we need to please even more of the AIs.
Conquest will probably trigger Domination first.
I'll go digging for the effects of Aggressive AI. The most obvious one is they'll go to war more often, but when they make peace, the cities will start to flip back.
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LC 12-26-2011 15:38
As I recall, the main effect of Aggressive AI now is that the barbs attack your cities after many fewer cities have been built. I think it's 1.5 per player, but ZPV can check that.
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ZPV 12-26-2011 18:23
LC - that's Raging Barbarians
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ZPV 12-26-2011 20:37
Effects of Aggressive AI:
----PlayerAI----
Less likely to ban nukes with UN.
They will use spies to hurt you even if they like you.
Less likely to choose diplo-boosting random event choices.
Less likely to pursue a cultural victory.
More likely to pursue nuke strategy (i.e. greater chance of building nukes).
Slightly less likely to pursue dagger strategy on high levels.
More likely to pursue crush strategy.
Wants more floating defenders.
----TeamAI----
More likely to use AREAAI_MASSING rather than AREAAI_DEFENSIVE
More likely to go to war to get over domination threshold.
Less likely to end a war when threatening more enemy cities, than own cities are threatened.
Much more likely to start a Max War
----CityAI----
AI willing to spend more gpt on units.
----UnitAI----
Settlers don't retreat to city
Units very occasionally conisder to worker-steal
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LC 12-27-2011 7:52
On ZPV's question how soon we have to commit ourselves:
Obviously, all our discussion is heavily dependent on our FCs. That said, I'm toying with the idea of beelining Optics. This would:
1. Leverage Alpha
2. Give us early knowledge of our scenario for VC determination, prior to committing ourselves
3. Give us a high-commerce empire (this beeline would require lots of cottages most likely), useful for Domination and quickly researching (Mono)-Theology or CoL-CS
I don't know how early we can get optics, though. We need 17t for 2 GSes and we need a lot of beakers. We could use Oracle for MC or even Machinery if feasible. Both Machinery and Optics are GS-bulbable. Optics requires researching math and alpha. Machinery requires NOT researching Fishing and additionally researching Aesthetics. Better would be to slingshot Machinery, of course.
It would be nice to know early on if this is a military VC scenario or a trap instead.
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LC 12-27-2011 8:53
Seems like Aggressive AI again assists warmongering VCs, because AIs will slow down their teching when putting more gpt into units and building roamers.
Another thought: The world size is not specified. I assume Large or Huge will slow down military VCs, right? We'll be able to figure that out when we get the save.
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beestar 12-27-2011 11:15
Hey guys, thanks for inviting me to OSS. Haven't thought much about S-GOTM over X-MAS yet, but I'm happy to contribute whatever I can.
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LC 12-27-2011 13:01
If anyone has time to make an isolated start with what we see, that would be great. I'd not put excessive resources around the start, but no need to be frugal either. Maybe use a Large map, since there are 8 AIs.
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Mitch 12-27-2011 13:01
A well-executed Religious Victory is hard to beat based on comparing HOF dates. Of course, these games didn't have the constraint of running a single religion the entire game either.
Since we know that we're beelining Hinduism followed by several worker techs, we shouldn't have to commit ourselves to any specific VC until we're trying to decide what to Oracle, right? Plus, if we are isolated pre-Optics, we have even more time to figure it out as we'd likely follow a very similar tech path until Optics regardless of our chosen VC.
EDIT: Welcome to the team, Beestar!!
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LC 12-27-2011 15:18
Here's a test save, isolated, very frugal set-up.
I got the machinery slingshot in 925BC on my first try, but the problem is we still need Math and Alphabet before we can bulb Optics. Since our GPs come out fast, I assume bulbing Machinery and Optics will be faster. Not sure though, because that adds Aesthetics to the mix.
EDIT: If you downloaded the test save before you saw this edit, download it again, please, cuz I uploaded the wrong file...
EDIT2: Note that the save is a Large map, which translates to about 7.5% slower teching or 5.5t at T77. On a Standard map, the Machinery slingshot would be about 1160 or 1120BC.
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ZPV 12-27-2011 19:42
I'll play around a bit, and watch the AI behaviour.
edit: you weren't kidding about it being frugal.
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LC 12-28-2011 9:23
Part of my thinking on beelining Optics if we're isolated is that we give ourselves a chance to find AIs that either don't have religion yet or not well spread. Secondly, with 8 AIs, if it's a standard-sized map, there's some chance we'll find an AI with only three cities, giving us the opportunity to GIFT HIM A CITY on our landmass!!!
Early Optics carries a number of potential solutions.
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ZPV 12-28-2011 6:26
Perhaps some variant of early Optics which doesn't sacrifice growth too much is in order - it isn't really until after we meet the other AIs that we'll know for sure if a quick religious victory is possible, or if we'll have to slog out a domination win.
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bbp 12-28-2011 21:42
I agree with ZPV. I don't think we should go all out for a Religous Victory until we know the lay of the land. For all we know, we may not even be isolated. At what point to we have to pull the trigger on the Optics beeline?
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beestar 12-29-2011 1:34
Not a lot for me to add to the discussion so far. Trying to define the difference between Religious vs. Domination paths sounds like a good next step - maybe draw up a tech path for each VC?
From the flavour text, it sounds like there's an ocean coast (as opposed to a lake) if we follow the river downstream, presumably not too many moves away. However, I'm not sure this knowledge helps us very much!
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LC 12-29-2011 13:59
ZPV, do you know where the code is for calculating the captured gold when capturing an AI city? I found docitycapturegold in CvPlayer but it says python does it. Is there no other info on that? I also noticed in GlobalDefines various CAPTURE_GOLD specifications. Have you ever figured out how it's calculated?
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ZPV 12-29-2011 17:36
@LC: It's in CvGameUtils.py
Call X = 20 + 10*pop + rand(50) + rand(50).
If the previous owner has had the city for 50 turns, then we get X gold.
If they acquired it more recently than that, then we get X/50 * (# of turns since they acquired the city)