adrianj
Deity
I can't believe we're even discussing this 
SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika
- Thread starter AlanH
- Start date
vranasm
Deity
I can see which way some of the last posts aim...
I have to say that I don't have problems with you using the AP for holy war, it is no broadly used strategy and kudos for thinking out of the box.
AP as is, is very ubalanced thing in civ though and thus things like religious diplomacy had to be banned from any competitions and I can understand why some people are not content with abusing some aspects of AP.
Btw I am very impressed that the diplomacy turned out to be that competitive, we had a lot of talks about diplomacy in team and Gumbolt even tried some bulbing paths towards early MM, but decided to stack with warmongering, since diplomacy is always a bit unstable and we as a team are more used to warmongering.
I have to say that I don't have problems with you using the AP for holy war, it is no broadly used strategy and kudos for thinking out of the box.
AP as is, is very ubalanced thing in civ though and thus things like religious diplomacy had to be banned from any competitions and I can understand why some people are not content with abusing some aspects of AP.
Btw I am very impressed that the diplomacy turned out to be that competitive, we had a lot of talks about diplomacy in team and Gumbolt even tried some bulbing paths towards early MM, but decided to stack with warmongering, since diplomacy is always a bit unstable and we as a team are more used to warmongering.
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- Mar 26, 2007
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Thank you for your support.
So which side of this issue on you on again?
How is The Apostolic Palace unbalanced? How are other aspects of the game more balanced? There must some way to measure how unbalanced a game mechanic is. Otherwise, we are just making subjective statements which really don't have much truth to them in the final analysis.
Religious Leader Diplomatic Victory is banned? Is that what you meant by religious diplomacy? Obviously, it is banned from SGOTM-14, but where else is it banned?
How can an entire Victory Condition be banned? People want to ban what they consider exploits. Now I hear that some people want to ban entire Victory Conditions? Why not ban the whole game?
Thanks again. As neilmeister pointed out, it has to be very difficult to win a Diplomatic Victory with AI Teams and Random Personalities. It was a fulfilling challenge to complete SGOTM-14 via Diplomatic Victory.
Sun Tzu Wu
mabraham
Deity
Nobody's said anything any team did was an actual exploit... Some people might think AP holy war or galleon chaining are exploits, but those would be points of view that are not supported by the rules under which the game was played. We can stop discussing this 
vranasm
Deity
@STW
If I state that "I can see some peoples point" that necessarily doesn't mean I have to agree with them on everything.
Using AP for your own diplomacy win is by many people considered as "cheap strategy", mostly probably because it is actually pretty tough for an AI to defend themself against it and human manipulation of AP - with this I think it's about building AP in religion you don't plan to run and know that almost no AI will run due to your plans if you go for so called "AP cheese".
When we're at it, it is actually pretty tough for human player to defend against "AI AP cheese" too, problem with this is mostly that the AI doesn't plan for this.
To me using AP for your own victory through religious victory is cheap strategy, unless the AP is built in religion that is well spread.
I don't have problem with holy wars even if this looks like it's nonsensical, there is to me very thin line somewhere there.
Making holy war has it's cost - you at least get into the war (even if at points it could be big dogpile more then anything).
edit:
maybe a little bit more to the "cheese" in AP that now came to mind...
Why should AI/human with 14 cities lose to AP win of someone once 1 of the cities gets the AP religion? That is imo dumb and not well thought out. One could argue that if at least 50% of your population is influenced by that AP religion there could be an argument, but imagine whole Arabia surrendering to Rome Papa thanks to christianity in Jerusalem... never happened.
If I state that "I can see some peoples point" that necessarily doesn't mean I have to agree with them on everything.
Using AP for your own diplomacy win is by many people considered as "cheap strategy", mostly probably because it is actually pretty tough for an AI to defend themself against it and human manipulation of AP - with this I think it's about building AP in religion you don't plan to run and know that almost no AI will run due to your plans if you go for so called "AP cheese".
When we're at it, it is actually pretty tough for human player to defend against "AI AP cheese" too, problem with this is mostly that the AI doesn't plan for this.
To me using AP for your own victory through religious victory is cheap strategy, unless the AP is built in religion that is well spread.
I don't have problem with holy wars even if this looks like it's nonsensical, there is to me very thin line somewhere there.
Making holy war has it's cost - you at least get into the war (even if at points it could be big dogpile more then anything).
edit:
maybe a little bit more to the "cheese" in AP that now came to mind...
Why should AI/human with 14 cities lose to AP win of someone once 1 of the cities gets the AP religion? That is imo dumb and not well thought out. One could argue that if at least 50% of your population is influenced by that AP religion there could be an argument, but imagine whole Arabia surrendering to Rome Papa thanks to christianity in Jerusalem... never happened.
mabraham
Deity
OSS are up to T151 and have their noses in front of PD on the power graph... Avoiding AP-peace and the need to keep trade routes to the West is keeping them busy. They haven't formed a wizard or detailed Domination-settling plan yet, though.
I am really interested in seeing how OSS keeps their game afloat. Their economy is in a delicate balance. I see that they are building units in their newly captured cities. Most of these cities do not have courthouses and are costing 9-10 gpt. They have about five turns of gold stores, then they need to get all thier troops to the next spoke. I know that capturing cities brings in more gold. I suppose building wealth in all the weaker cities will help too. Wouldn't it be better to try to whip a courthouse prior to units in newly captured, larger cities?
They'll find a way. 5 turns worth of gold is a lot. As long as they keep capturing cities they should be fine. They won't need to capture the whole map with domination.
Be interesting to see how they do. if they are matching PD time they have about 30-40 turns left. So 6-8 a day now?
Be interesting to see how they do. if they are matching PD time they have about 30-40 turns left. So 6-8 a day now?
vranasm
Deity
deadline is in 4 days though... would be shame if they don't finish due to time.
Bebekija
King
^^ They will finish in time, no doubt about that. They played 15 turns in the past 48h, I'm sure they can do the same till the end of the week. The time of infinite discussions and micro planning is over now.
Let's just see how much time it takes them to plan their end game, as they seem to be doing right now.
Regarding their economy, as Gumbolt said, 5 turns worth of gold gives them time to adapt when the need arise.
They *will* have to whip CHs at some point though, because the 9-10 gpt of new cities right now will turn into 15-20 gpt as they keep conquering (and keeping) new cities.
And then yes it's probably better to whip the CH right off the bat when the city is Pop 8-10, unless the AI had the curtacy to leave a couple of forests untouched...
I have a question for those who went the domination route :
How much land is required to trigger the domination limit? Or put differently, how many AIs does one have to eliminate? 5-6 spokes? + the center of the map?
Let's just see how much time it takes them to plan their end game, as they seem to be doing right now.
Regarding their economy, as Gumbolt said, 5 turns worth of gold gives them time to adapt when the need arise.
They *will* have to whip CHs at some point though, because the 9-10 gpt of new cities right now will turn into 15-20 gpt as they keep conquering (and keeping) new cities.
And then yes it's probably better to whip the CH right off the bat when the city is Pop 8-10, unless the AI had the curtacy to leave a couple of forests untouched...
I have a question for those who went the domination route :
How much land is required to trigger the domination limit? Or put differently, how many AIs does one have to eliminate? 5-6 spokes? + the center of the map?
The only spokes we left were Indians and Mongols. So 6 spokes and the centre should be ample. The question will be how they best maximise use of settlers and get the wizard in the last 30-40 turns. They will want 20-30 settlers and need 2-3 turns for culture.
Overall they have 5 turns of gold and they could probably do a 1-2 civic swap but I think they'll be fine. PR were losing -400 gold a turn near the end. They are only at -200 gold.
The big plus for OSS is they are still fighting archers.
Overall they have 5 turns of gold and they could probably do a 1-2 civic swap but I think they'll be fine. PR were losing -400 gold a turn near the end. They are only at -200 gold.
The big plus for OSS is they are still fighting archers.
With AI teams, the requirement for Domination is 68% of the land. Here's our best estimate of what a Domination would look like: Post 1153
There are some differences between the actual test map and the real map, but they are similiar.
I'd love to ask Neilmeister the map settings he used to generate the orginal map as we put a fair amount of effort into deducing it before we could see much of the map.
The Wizard helped slow down all victory conditions.
The huge distances hampered war.
The 68% limit from AI teams slowed down domination.
The AI teams and random AI put a dent in Diplo efforts.
All the happy resources and stone/marble sped up Culture.
The mountains kept us guessing on Wizard.
I could go on and on about the map, but I loved it
Bonus map question:
Spoiler :
It's a HUB map, low sea level and flat... he removed some land from the AI and gave us some more as well as put pretty much every resource available for versatility. The big mountain clusters are his work also.
To reflect changes done in worldbuilder you need to save as a scenario and load that scenario.
resource available for versatility. The big mountain clusters are his work also.To reflect changes done in worldbuilder you need to save as a scenario and load that scenario.
I think the fact that we have teams chasing 4 different victory conditions (Culture, diplo, conquest and dom) mostly in different ways speaks volumes about how intelligently constructed this scenario was.
Here are my questions for Neil (you don't have to answer these here, you can do it in the main thread after everyone's done if you want):
1) Why put the AI on teams? Sure it was a surprise but what was the rationale behind it? Was it to make the game harder? If so then why hubs which made the AI's easy enough to conquer one by one? I think that this probably mostly affected the diplo vic as well as slowing down the tech pace.
2) I touched on this earlier, but why did you pick the wheel map? Was it for the mix of naval and land warfare, forcing teams to choose to travel the long way by land or build ships for shortcuts?
3) Which leaders did you give which personalities and why? In our game it had little effect although I suspect that ragnar was given a warlike nature on purpose. Again this will make a big difference for the team going for diplo.
4) Why put the wiz there and why make him only reachable post astro? I think this was a smart move. It made it a challenge for the peaceful teams to ship units over to kill him and for the warring teams i forced them to be able to research another expensive tech. Personally, I would have had a line of plains tiles leading up to him to symbolise the "Yellow Brick Road"!
5) We were wondering earlier whether the big peak islands put there simply as a distraction or was it to make domination take a bit longer as well?
6) How much terrain did you alter? What was the thinking behind the starting position. Giving us such a resource rich hub, and gifting the teams archery?
Many questions and many more to come I'm sure!
One thing I am getting used to is lots of commerce resources, marble and stone each game!! It is almost a given assumption each SGOTM now. I think taking away the Ai land only made it more easier for the player. The wizard was always going to be in somewhere on the other side of the map from us.
The Wizard helped slow down all victory conditions.
The huge distances hampered war. As planned
The 68% limit from AI teams slowed down domination. and the mountains
The AI teams and random AI put a dent in Diplo efforts. To say the least
All the happy resources and stone/marble sped up Culture. Happy resources sped up everything, check out how much whipping the dom/con teams did
The mountains kept us guessing on Wizard. Excellent, I wanted teams to find out late that they didn't need incredible units to beat him, and I thought they would be great red herrings
I could go on and on about the map, but I loved it
Bonus map question:Spoiler :
Kossin has it right.
You have to save the WB file, then open as a scenario. The limits are calculated at loading and are not adjusted by worldbuildering. Maybe loading the game after it has been worldbuildered will cause the game to recalculate. Not sure.
My comments in red
edit: and kossin is right, it was a Hub map in the end, though I did experiment with Wheel.
Don't expect the works next time
Taking land from the AI did make it a bit easier for you, but trust me, you should prefer it that way.
This is one of the hardest Emperor game I have ever played, for most victory conditions (Culture and Space are the exceptions). The 'Cuteness' WOTM was harder, but that was at quick speed. You should try to single play it if you don't believe me. I was worried when I submitted it that some teams would lose, though it looks now like some might not finish.
Don't expect the works next time
Taking land from the AI did make it a bit easier for you, but trust me, you should prefer it that way.
This is one of the hardest Emperor game I have ever played, for most victory conditions (Culture and Space are the exceptions). The 'Cuteness' WOTM was harder, but that was at quick speed. You should try to single play it if you don't believe me. I was worried when I submitted it that some teams would lose, though it looks now like some might not finish.
I think most teams will finish. Team Roadkill have started UN. Although they are now facing 4 rifles in the Wizard city!
. Not sure 9 cavalry will do the trick.Xteam/FE are almost done. OSS will finish in 20-30 turns.
The big doubt is TNT. Although lack of team members is the cause here. They could just play out a spaceship game?
The team aspect is what makes it easier i guess as you are planning and testing compared to a normal game. So you have a point.
mabraham
Deity
Wow, that was unlucky for you. The amphibious promotion (which requires C1 and C2) is worth -%50% attacking from a boat (IIRC). The extra +50% penalty on the wizard's 11.4 post-airship strength shouldn't be a net loss, given your extra 5 strength and -25% from pinch (you gain 5 strength, he gains 11.4*0.25 approx 3 strength compared to our case).
