From Emperor to Demigod

Well, this is getting interesting again. The 500 years' war is still in its early stages but, after a mere 150 years, the tide has definitely started to turn in my favour. The AI, even at this level, has no idea how to concentrate its forces nor how to use air power. Instead of battering troops in cities the bombers are for degrading the enemy's economy. And just sending 7-8 tanks across the border at a time is equally futile. They just get picked off. I now have a slightly larger population, after being behind 50-30 when hostilities started. I have destroyed two cities, and captured two more, one of which I gave back to India (which had the audacity to refuse the ROP I needed to extricate my artillery and turn it on an enemy city on the turn after the recapture of Dacca but then threatened war if they didn't move automatically, which solved the problem neatly . I have lost no cities. Only one re-start when I failed to remember to deal with an amphibious intrusion and lost all my workers (!) and a core city.

I am still a few turns away from having tanks myself but with two armies of cavalry, one of infantry and one of rifleman/guerrilla army, each with four units, and masses of artillery and bombers, I can pick off enemy cities at will.

I only wish I had known war mobilisation was not reversible without a peace treaty. My cities are over-producing armaments and wasting vast quantities of shields. Don't tell Lanzelot.

Anyhow, Carthage complete the Manhattan Project a few turns ago and if she has any sense I expect the nukes will start raining down. Maybe if I can get India's vote I can be sec gen ...

I hope nobody minds if I witter on. The tide of war has definitely turned in my favour. Even the military adviser thinks I have an average (=overwhelming) military compared to Carthage and that's presumably counting the expensive-looking carriers and battleships I see steaming offshore doing nothing much. Carthage retains about 49% of the land against my 33% but pop. is now 46/38 my way and knocking off cities is now just a matter of lining everything up and firing. So the 700 point lead Carthage has should start coming down soon. I can probably even cope with the occasional nuke so long as it is just occasional.

My bombers are not getting shot at by anything and small pockets of infrantry invaders are as common a sight as tanks now. Ghandi now fixes me with a radiant smile as reward for the supply of cheap horses and spice. No danger of India getting frisky either as she has no coal, iron, rubber or oil - lol. I will continue to donate burdensome or irrelevant cities to India to keep her on my side.

Now I have a spy in Carthage. Turns out there is only one bomber, no anti-aircraft capability, only two tanks left, 9 artillery (to my 35) but a humongous navy of 21 destroyers, a battleship, a sub, three carriers (with no planes) four transports and two caravels for old times sake. I have one galley which I built by mistake about a thousand years ago. Infantry is even. No ICBMs or nukes of any kind. No cavalry. Great, an immobile army, practically no Air Force and an irrelevant navy

I got bored, made a treaty which delivered some techs and will now switch to democracy and build things. Carthage is neutered and this time there should be no way back. A short peace and then one more war should do it. Does anyone know what happens when you destroy the Manhattan Project (or, rather, the city that built it)? Must it be built again or can you make nukes anyway?

Update: I forgot I had a MDP with India so peace did not last long and I was pitched back into conflict almost immediately. Which is good, because it took me off war mobilisation and also because peace was a mistake anyway. I am so far behind Carthage on the histograph thing and still a long way behind in technology that I could easily end up losing the space race (possibly to India, actually). So it's domination or nothing. I now have 60% pop. Do I win with 66% or do I have to get 66% land area as well (I'm still some way off that)? Whatever, it is now going to be Always War to the end. I will post the final save and some thoughts about the topic of this thread anon.

walletta said:

Don't tell Lanzelot.

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I'm not looking...

walletta said:

I got bored, made a treaty which delivered some techs and will now switch to democracy and build things. Carthage is neutered and this time there should be no way back. A short peace and then one more war should do it. Does anyone know what happens when you destroy the Manhattan Project (or, rather, the city that built it)? Must it be built again or can you make nukes anyway?

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Coincidentally I investigated this question a few days ago as part of a study on the German civforum.de:
http://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?62105-Kleines-fragliches-Allerlei&p=6278621&viewfull=1#post6278621

Hmm, perhaps it is interesting enough to repost it here in the strategy forum

For posterity

Well, I would like to thank my team, my family, Ghandi for being such a dupe staunch ally and last, but not least, the ingenious posters here, especially the great prophet Lanzelot, who foretold many things that actually came to pass.

The endgame was as foreshadowed a few posts above, Carthage being removed from the map altogether in the year 1794, about 200 years after launching an entirely unprovoked assault on the peace-loving Maya. From which I derive the first lesson that occurs to me - Carthage had no need of that war as it was winning easily and, having declared war, it had no need to prosecute it aggressively. From which it seems to follow that, had Carthage not declared war, the only move to save the game would have been for me to have done so and then to hope Carthage conducted it in the same incompetent manner.

But, back to the beginning. I started the thread as a means of gaining an understanding of concepts that had eluded me over many years of playing and which I would never have figured out by myself and I have learned a great deal, including:

- the critical importance and technique of MM (of course, much room for improvement as with everything else)
- city placement and spacing
- the revelation that techs cost less the more Civs know them (should be obvious really but I never knew before)
- the importance of calculation, almost everything in the game being calculable
- the interrelationship of beakers, food and shields in city functioning
- how to survive the early phase (after many failed attempts)
- the ideal composition and capability of the ancient army (in this specific case: six spears, six horsemen, six catapults and some workers and settlers)
- the importance of workers!
- that an alarming tech and culture and military and pop. and territorial deficit can be overcome, amazingly
- that my defensive methods work as well at DG as at emperor (fortresses, rail and artillery) with the added element of improved city placement, being able to send reinforcements from one city to another in one turn is very strong as is the sneaky 'weak' target stratagem.

OTOH I did not do any pre-building, maybe because on a tiny map there are enough GWs to go around, nor did I learn that much about trading or diplomacy, both huge areas for improvement.

All in all, great fun. I see now why the better players like the Maya, despite their not terribly useful UU, and also how some things play out over very long time spans. Anyhow, as someone nearly used to say, if you have been, thanks for reading. I hope others got something out of the thread too.

Lanzelot said:

I investigated this question a few days ago as part of a study on the German civforum.de:
http://www.civforum.de/showthread.p...hes-Allerlei&p=6278621&viewfull=1#post6278621

Hmm, perhaps it is interesting enough to repost it here in the strategy forum

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That is interesting -- but might be more useful to most CFCers if translated into English... I'd offer to help with that, but you don't need it I also have a possibly similar case to report. Unfortunately there's no savegame, because this incident happened a couple of years back during one of my Vanilla solo games, and prior to my first (botched) attempt to install Conquests. But anyway...

During the late game, I built a city in newly conquered territory on the shores of a small lake (1-2 tiles). Because I was still settling loose, and all its BFC tiles were already fully improved+railed, I could build improvements fast (including a Factory), and it quickly reached Pop12, so I built a Hospital as well (don't -- I was/am a compulsive Builder, and didn't know any better at the time!). When it got to about Pop17 (IIRC), the lake-tile adjacent to the city dried up due to global warming (I've also seen this happen to saltwater coast tiles), but that's not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is that even though the city was still harvesting a significant food excess, it stopped growing.

It took me a couple of turns to confirm that I hadn't just overlooked something, but once I had, I thought, "OK, it's a bug, possibly connected to the loss of the lake, but I can live with it -- I'm making >30SPT, so I'll just build 1T-Settlers at this Pop-level instead". But after the first Settler was finished, even though food excess was still available, the city was now stuck at the lower Pop-level instead -- and I couldn't rejoin the Settler to it. So I carried on building Settlers and then Workers down below Pop12, but the situation didn't change.

And then the penny finally dropped (I admit it, I can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes!). Because the lake was gone, the city no longer had access to freshwater, and the game was therefore disallowing _any_ city-growth -- but at the same time it was also preventing me from building an Aqueduct, because the city was still at >Pop7 and so didn't 'need' one! As soon as I'd taken the city all the way down to Pop6, the game finally permitted me to start building the Aqueduct that I hadn't needed when the city was first founded -- and once it was done, I could immediately add all those Settlers+Workers straight back into the city, and bounce it back up to Pop13+ in one turn!

On topic:
Congrats to walletta on your first(?) DG win!

Now the big question -- can you do it again, without all the replays/reloads...?

What's wrong with building hospitals?

tjs282 said:

snip
On topic:
Congrats to walletta on your first(?) DG win!

Now the big question -- can you do it again, without all the replays/reloads...?

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That is a good question. I expect I have a long way to go to attain mastery but that's good in a way as it's better for the game to be beyond my reach. And thank you. I liked your story about the disappearing lake btw.

@ walletta: Let me second tjs282, congratulating you on your DG win and challenging you to do it next time w/o reloads.

@ Lanzelot: Re: "Asterix":

QUESTIONS:
1) About that deer W of Entremont: How did you get 4 fpt out of it in Despo? Game is only +1f, even after irrigating the 2f grassland it's +4f, then -1(Despo penalty)=3fpt. Or am I missing something? (Sure, but what?)
2) It took you 40 turns to set up the settler pump. Would you have enough time on Demigod to do this before getting hemmed in by the AI(s) with that fructifying extra starting settler?
3) Likewise the Republic slingshot. It took you 56 turns with Republic free from Philo. Is it doable on Demigod?
a) How come everybody picks CoL before Philo? Wouldn't it be safer to research Philo first, in order to minimize the risk of an AI Civ getting it, especially on Demigod?
b) This probably belongs in the "bugs" section, but in my last game on Emperor I did CoL first, then Philo, but didn't get Republic for free. I checked--and rechecked--the other civs (7 on a standard map) but nobody else had Philo [Edit: This is almost certainly incorrect. While I was offered free techs but not Republic it must've been that I hadn't actually researched CoL. False memory perhaps?]. So how come I didn't get Republic free? Anybody else experienced this? Thanks.

Thank you, Jivilov. I accept the challenge, although I fear much frustration lies ahead. I will go for either a huge or a large continental map next time, as recommended at the top of the thread.

Jivilov said:

a) How come everybody picks CoL before Philo? Wouldn't it be safer to research Philo first, in order to minimize the risk of an AI Civ getting it, especially on Demigod?

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Because if you go for Philo first, the Republic-slingshot won't work. Remember, in order to get any freebie tech, you have to know all the prerequisites for that tech. So you must research/buy CoL before researching Philo if you want to get Republic as your freebie for finishing Philo first -- as we learned to our cost in our SG...

b) This probably belongs in the "bugs" section, but in my last game on Emperor I did CoL first, then Philo, but didn't get Republic for free. I checked--and rechecked--the other civs (7 on a standard map) but nobody else had Philo. So how come I didn't get Republic free? Anybody else experienced this? Thanks.

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Did you get offered the chance to choose any other free tech? If so, that suggests that you actually hadn't got CoL after all. If not, and if you know for sure that you were the first to CoL+Philo, then yes, that sounds like a bug.

What's wrong with building hospitals?

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From my Monarch-level Builder's PoV, nothing at all!

But there is a school of thought on CFC that if you are aiming for one of the high-tech Modern-Age VCs (Spaceship or Diplo) -- and especially at higher levels (due to the AI research-advantage) -- you may not/will not have beakers/ turns available to pursue dead-end tech-tree branches. Since Sanitation is both a late-era and an optional tech, it is therefore a low priority -- but without Sanitation, you cannot build Hospitals, so your cities cannot ever grow above Pop12.

Also, because of the AI's production advantages (and bonus starting units) at high levels, you will almost certainly get hemmed in very quickly during the early game. So in order to maximise exploitation of the territory you do manage to grab (for whatever VC you have in mind), you should be aiming to get to Republic, and get all your core cities to Pop12, as early as possible -- but that means they will reach their maximum sizes long before you even get the opportunity to research Sanitation.

If cities are spaced 'optimally' (CxxxxC) or 'loose' (CxxxC), there will therefore be many BFC tiles within your borders that cannot be used for many turns of the game. It is therefore considered better to space cities tightly (CxxC -- this also allows cities to help defend their neighbours from early invasions, so less military is required), and distributed so as to allow each city to use exactly 12 BFC tiles (producing 24FPT). You will then never need to spend any shields on Hospitals, and can put them into something more useful for your chosen VC (Factories, military-units, Culture, etc.).

Finally, if you allow your cities to grow past Pop12 -- especially at high levels when most/all of your citizens are born hard-to-please, and during wartime when Lux-imports may be cut off without warning -- you are likely to be struggling to keep your people happy. Rather than forcing yourself into a position where you absolutely need all 8 Luxes and 30-40% Lux spending just to keep a Pop20+ city from rioting in peacetime (never mind wartime), by deliberately limiting city size to Pop12, you may only need to control/import 3-4 Luxes plus maybe 10-20% Lux-spending to turn those frowns upside-down...

walletta said:

What's wrong with building hospitals?

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Nothing. tjs282 already explained it quite well. Only one thing I see differently:

tjs282 said:

But there is a school of thought on CFC that if you are aiming for one of the high-tech Modern-Age VCs (Spaceship or Diplo) -- and especially at higher levels (due to the AI research-advantage) -- you may not/will not have beakers/ turns available to pursue dead-end tech-tree branches.

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I would say that especially at the lower levels (due to the AI research-disadvantage) you will not have beakers/turns to spare for an optional tech like Sanitation. On the higher levels, the AI is sometimes still competitive even in the Industrial Age and sometimes researches Sanitation for me. Then I try to pick it up and build some hospitals, where it makes sense. (Sometimes coastal cities are able to work a few additional sea tiles, if they get a hospital. In our current SG Kolossusstadt would be such a case.) But on the lower levels, the AI stops being helpful sometime in the Middle Ages. Getting it to research an expensive industrial tech for you before the game is over, would really be a big stroke of luck...

Jivilov said:

1) About that deer W of Entremont: How did you get 4 fpt out of it in Despo? Game is only +1f, even after irrigating the 2f grassland it's +4f, then -1(Despo penalty)=3fpt. Or am I missing something? (Sure, but what?)

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Game is +2f

Jivilov said:

2) It took you 40 turns to set up the settler pump. Would you have enough time on Demigod to do this before getting hemmed in by the AI(s) with that fructifying extra starting settler?

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On small maps, yes. The Asterix game was a standard size map, and unless you are very unlucky with extremely close neighbors, there shouldn't be a problem with setting up a complete first ring even on Demigod.

Jivilov said:

3) Likewise the Republic slingshot. It took you 56 turns with Republic free from Philo. Is it doable on Demigod?

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On Emperor it is like a 95% chance. Even great players already missed the slingshot on Emperor (like templar_x in the Asterix game and I.Larkin in one of the COTMs a while ago. And these two are real masters.)
On Demigod it's a 50-60% chance, in my experience. The better the start position, the better the chance to get it fast enough.
Experienced players, once they see they got a bad start position, play it safe in this case and go directly for Philo. Of course that forfeits the chance of getting Republic for free, but getting CoL for free is better than getting nothing...

Jivilov said:

b) This probably belongs in the "bugs" section, but in my last game on Emperor I did CoL first, then Philo, but didn't get Republic for free. I checked--and rechecked--the other civs (7 on a standard map) but nobody else had Philo. So how come I didn't get Republic free? Anybody else experienced this? Thanks.

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Never heard of any such bug. Do you still have an (auto-)save from before that situation? Must be something quite obvious.

Lanzelot said:

Coincidentally I investigated this question a few days ago as part of a study on the German civforum.de:
http://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?62105-Kleines-fragliches-Allerlei&p=6278621&viewfull=1#post6278621

Hmm, perhaps it is interesting enough to repost it here in the strategy forum

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Here it is, a new strategy article:
Build Projects with Prerequisites

Re: the hospitals, thanks guys. Hitherto, I have been building them everywhere!

Lanzelot said:

Here it is, a new strategy article:
Build Projects with Prerequisites

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Interesting.

I would say that especially at the lower levels (due to the AI research-disadvantage) you will not have beakers/turns to spare for an optional tech like Sanitation.

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I think this only really applies if you're going for HoF-level scores, with as early a launch/win date as possible.

But on the lower levels, the AI stops being helpful sometime in the Middle Ages.

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...because the human player is now (or should be -- right?) so far ahead of the AICivs that they will be first to research everything they aim at, even despite the steeper research costs. But arguably, if you have such a huge lead, you can afford to take the time to sidetrack to 1 or 2 non-optionals, and still retain that lead -- unless you're going for HoF-level scores, with as early a blablabla...

In our current SG Kolossusstadt would be such a case.)

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Not according to my food map -- all the available BFC water-tiles were distributed between K'stadt, Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven, with all those cities working 12 tiles in total! K'stadt could only work more wet stuff if it took tiles away from Hamburg and/or Wilhelmshaven, which would then have to take tiles from their neighbours (Aarhus, Fischberg, Waldorf), etc. all up and down the coast...

Lanzelot said:

Game is +2f

Never heard of any such bug. Do you still have an (auto-)save from before that situation? Must be something quite obvious.

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Much obliged for your replies Lancelot.

As for game (deer) I was looking at the (vanilla?) Civilopedia on-site. In Conquests it's definitely +2f. Sorry for the kipper.

Unfortunately I don't have a save from the supposedly free-tech-from-Philo situation. Since I was at drawn-out wars with two distant Civs due to rebuffed demands that might've been it. Took over 20 turns to resolve them, and it wasn't until several amphibious landings were beaten off that their extortion was moderated enough to settle. Apparently I forgot to check their techs afterwards, silly me.

Anyway thanks again for everything. "Asterix" was indeed an epiphany for this niedergeschlagen DG wannabe.