Early Game Fail...But Can I Still Win?

This was brilliant.

Just a request: Do the next on Emperor?

Personally, I have gotten to the point that I can beat King consistently, but I tried two games on Emperor and got thoroughly pummeled. The thing is, I think what made this story so great was the struggling, as opposed to being first in everything and cruising through. I think that your playing on Emperor would make for an even better story

great hearing about the game all the way through.

To quote Megamind, "There's a benefit to losing - you get to learn from your mistakes."

This was a very fun thread to read!

Entertaining write-up. As a player who typically sets the AI at Immortal or Diety, I'd note the following as the single biggest turning-points, others may disagree:

1) Defensive wars should be fought with ranged units, not melee units. I wouldn't even have built swordsman until I was getting ready to go on the offense. As you learned when Portugal sent Ironclads after Frigates, ranged units are tactically superior to melee units because they can inflict harm without suffering harm. Melee units serve three purposes: defending your ranged units (including cities), seizing cities, and peripheral mop-up operations.

2) Don't make huge concessions for diplomacy's sake. You gave up a free luxury resource and entered into a pointless war to score diplomatic points, but the AI is not loyal enough to make this trade-off worth it.

3) When you go to war, mean it. Your wars against Venice, the Celts, the Aztecs, and Venice's city-state allies, as you eventually found out, were very costly for you and did not really yield any benefit. More so than ever before (thanks to how easy it is for your trade routes to get pillaged), declaring war at all has serious consequences. Declaring war against several city-states is incredibly dangerous, as at higher difficulty levels if you're enough of a warmonger, city-states will spontaneously declare war on you and never make peace. The more you make war, the more other civs will see you as a warmonger and feel no compunction about attacking you if you seem weak. If you don't have the resources to win a serious strategic objective in an offensive war, don't start it.

4) This is tied in to point 3, but you should have killed Venice when he proposed banning crabs. Not only was that the surest way of defeating his proposal (since a dead Venice has no city-state allies to vote), but it was good long-term strategy. Part of winning is preventing other people from winning. You need to keep an eye on who might beat you to the finish-line and intervene when necessary. Diplomatic Victory was enabled, and Venice was accruing lots and lots of city-state allies. Instead of a two-pronged war against the Aztecs and Venice both, you should have put everything into destroying Venice. With your formidable navy and the AI's complete lack of understanding of naval combat, it should have been easy to take the city if your navy was supported by ground troops.

I would like to join everyone else in saying that that this thread was brilliant and very entertaining to read. You changed the way I think about playing Civilization, and I have been playing since 1991. Now instead of playing at a difficulty that I can usually win, I plan to play at one where the outcome is much more uncertain or even stacked against me. The struggle really made your story exciting.

Thank you for all of the feedback!!!! It is truly appreciated. Based on feedback, I will do my next game on Emporer. I'd like to play a lessor favored civ, someone that doesn't get played very often. I think Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Japan, or Germany. Any suggestions? Who just sucks to play?

Japan would be perfect for a revenge scenario, but the Bushido eases the struggling. So, choose your enemies well!

I echo all the comments - this was a real joy to read Sometimes, losing can be more fun than winning.

Jatta Pake said:

The Heart Pounding, Epic Conclusion


8. More civs in a game equals more war. This is simply a hypothesis that needs further testing, but based on comments in the forums and in my game, it seems like the "too passive" AI doesn't really exist when you cram a bunch more civs into the game. It got straight up crazy on my planet with 22 civs on a Large map. I hope we can eventually dial it up to 40+ civs in a game.

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I've found this to be true as well. Playing on standard maps, I've been adding two civs to bring it to 10 and usually at least one goes down before too long, somtimes two or three (I had a nice Greece domination victory where Austria and Spain were just asking for it).

I haven't done a 22 civ game yet because I've read concerns about game balance at that level. Did you notice anything go goofy due to the number of civs?

I'd go with Japan and try leading with Honor

Or Sweden with Honor... steal CS with GG

I vote for Spain, 2nd choice Denmark. If your goal is the story of the plucky underdog struggling against a superior opponent, you would benefit from a nation with a quirky ability to enhance the storytelling. My favorite moment from your last game was when all seemed lost, then you STOLE THE ENTIRE PORTUGUESE FLEET out from under them and were back in the game! Spain and Denmark both have quirky abilities that come up relatively infrequently but can have dramatic results when they do.

Jatta Pake said:

2. Revolutionary Waves are bad. I didn't do the math (remember, I hate math) but it seemed like when my empire fell into a Revolutionary Wave, the number of unhappy citizens actually exceeded my total number of citizens. Consequently, no amount of local happiness generation can counter the "extra" mad citizens during a Rev Wave. All of my people could be as locally happy as possible but my empire could still have -20 global unhappiness. This means ideological unhappiness can only really be countered by global happiness promoting mechanisms like luxuries. This can be tough when your economy is broken and all you have at your disposal is hammers (production).

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I think the Revolutionary Wave unhappiness penalty is something like 4 per city OR 1/3 total populations (whichever is greater). This means in order for the penalty to be greater than your total population, you would have to have a lot of INCREDIBLY small cities (say all cities an average of 4 pop).

I enjoyed reading this as well. Have fun if you decide to do it again...

I vote Indonesia, they don't get much love around here.

RedFuneral said:

I vote Indonesia, they don't get much love around here.

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Indonesia would be another good, quirky choice.

Goldstar said:

I think the Revolutionary Wave unhappiness penalty is something like 4 per city OR 1/3 total populations (whichever is greater). This means in order for the penalty to be greater than your total population, you would have to have a lot of INCREDIBLY small cities (say all cities an average of 4 pop).

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Rev wave is actually 10 per city or 1 unhappy per 2 population.

Indonesia could be fun.

Just remember...don't settle a city on a resource on another continent. The resource will be replaced by your "bonus" luxury provided its within your first three "off-continent" cities.

Vidszhite said:

Rev wave is actually 10 per city or 1 unhappy per 2 population.

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Ahh, that makes more sense then.

Thanks everyone. I decided to go with Indonesia for my next game. I can't resist the wackiness of the Kris Swordsman. I will post my next game in the "Let's Play" forum as it technically belongs there, but I will stick a link to it in this thread if you are subscribed. I'll also link it in my signature.

My next "Fail" game has begun! Link.