Gr25 - AWD vs 30 civs on 250x250 Archipelago

Going for a very hard variant. This is the second attempt. Can we stay in the running vs deity AI if we have to do all research ourselves at this high level? Every other game we have been caught up by the Industrial Age. In this one we have to hope we can catch up by the modern era as UN is still turned on.

Special rules:
We must win by conquest.
We must not get a tech from the Great Library (i.e we can own it for a turn only if we have Education).

Settings:
Map: 250x250
AI: All 30 opponents
Civ: Ottomans
Archipelago
70% water
No Barbs
Deity


Standard AW: Must declare war as soon as we have contact with no trades, but we can look at our opponents, their techs, etc.

Roster:
Greebley
Northern Pike
markh
ThERat
I.Larkin

We ended up not using the initial start due to opponent count. Instead we with with this one:


We start around post 30.

Lurker:

It looks like you still may have 100K. I did not load the game, but CA says you will get a culture win by 126xxx AD. This a 1cpt, so that would be around 100k.

Need to fix your biq for the 250 games to at least 160k. As I said before 250K would be the value if you go by the levels in existence.

I think the GLB will not have an impact in this game so the variant will not matter. It is a guess on my part, but I see like this:

you cannot build it anyway as you need to gear up for battle and face archer and spears from the start.

you likely would not get it as it will be a hard road to get Lit in time to beat them, even with a reasonable pre. The kicker is you may not get a reasonable pre with Bismark.

BTW if you do correct the biq for culture please post it. Again good luck guys.

I've got it.

lurker's comment:

Greebley said:

Around 3300 BC we met Germany (a German spear was spotted).
The picture is lit up so you can see a border to the north that we spotted early on and retreated from. It appears German blue to me (at least I am hoping it isn't Korean Purple).

Click to expand...

I'm a little confused..have you formally met Germany yet?

Good Luck. I'll be following (though may not be qualified to comment much )

lurker's comment:

You got Ivory again, talk about luck

Here's hoping you have a better run this time, and only Germany to kill

It should be the updated one to 180,000 but I may have made an error somewhere. I will have to double-check.

I think the chances of one runaway civ is a lot lower on Archipelago due to the AI's inability for naval invasion so I am not sure it really matters if it is 100K

And yes we did meet Germany. Their Spear came by our city. We can expect units in the not distant future.

View attachment GR25-2550BC.SAV, end of turn

2950 (1): A German force of three archers, two spearmen, and a warrior appears.


2900 (2): Istanbul walls --> spearman.


2850 (3): Our exploring warrior discovers a brown border in the west.


2800 (4): Behind our walls we repel the attacks of two archers and a warrior, with a spearman promoting to elite (3-0).


2750 (5): The Germans pillage our northernmost wheat tile.

Istanbul spearman --> barracks.


2710 - 2630 (6 -8): Not much. The two German spearmen don't see any attractive targets after I'm able to cover the next wheat tile with the elite spearman, and move away, but two more archers advance.


2590 (9): Another German archer perishes attacking Istanbul (4-0).


2550 (10): Well, I don't normally advocate giving up when there's no immediate crisis. But this is just the same sandwich position we were in last game, with the added disadvantage that the Germans already have spearmen, and to persist with it would probably be a waste of time. I'd start another game and still consider it GR25, since we never intended to play the same bad situation again, but that's Greebley's call.

Who would have though it could be so hard to get an isolated start on an archipelago? Perhaps the program can't organize thirty-one islands for thirty-one civs--conflicts with the rules for resource and luxury distribution, and so on.

Greebley, if the search for a playable start is a tedious amount of work for you, you could post the biq file and we could all try, as we have before.

The fatal brown border:

Looks like I need to explore more before posting. so it may be more than 20 turns. I will try again.

I will replace the second post with a 4000BC picture and then post my play at the end.

I also think I will go for Iron Working at min. We are getting warrior code only a few turns faster than 50 at best so Iron working and cash is the better deal.

Lurker:

I noticed you had temp at Cool. I have seen that with islands of all tundra, the editor seems to leave them uninhabited more than other island types. Even if they are quite large. That may contribute to having more nation packed onto landmasses.

BTW the culture was 180K. I think the 126xxxAD date was for the AI, which probably was doing more than the 1cpt, sorry about that.

I almost always choose random for the bottom settings

You know, for all Greebley and the team would try to accomplish, I was thinking it might be easier just to play LK's world map as Australia with the same rules. True, it's not the Ottomans, it's not archipelago, and it's not 31 civs, but at least there are benefits. For sure there is no one else on the continent, it's big enough to have something of a chance to develop a scientific base with, and although the Man-O-War isn't a real popular UU, it would stand a chance against the frigates that are sure to later be all over the place. And it would provide the same opportunity to find out what the challenges are in terms of scientific advancement. Plus, with an idea of the map layout at least it's possible to develop a strategy early on.

I like this idea actually

But do you want to fight a land war in Asia?

M60A3TTS said:

You know, for all Greebley and the team would try to accomplish, I was thinking it might be easier just to play LK's world map as Australia with the same rules. True, it's not the Ottomans, it's not archipelago, and it's not 31 civs, but at least there are benefits. For sure there is no one else on the continent, it's big enough to have something of a chance to develop a scientific base with, and although the Man-O-War isn't a real popular UU, it would stand a chance against the frigates that are sure to later be all over the place. And it would provide the same opportunity to find out what the challenges are in terms of scientific advancement. Plus, with an idea of the map layout at least it's possible to develop a strategy early on.

Click to expand...

The UU is 5,7,1 Anzac Rifleman in that map!

M60A3TTS said:

You know, for all Greebley and the team would try to accomplish, I was thinking it might be easier just to play LK's world map as Australia with the same rules. True, it's not the Ottomans, it's not archipelago, and it's not 31 civs, but at least there are benefits. For sure there is no one else on the continent, it's big enough to have something of a chance to develop a scientific base with, and although the Man-O-War isn't a real popular UU, it would stand a chance against the frigates that are sure to later be all over the place. And it would provide the same opportunity to find out what the challenges are in terms of scientific advancement. Plus, with an idea of the map layout at least it's possible to develop a strategy early on.

Click to expand...

I thought the object of trying an archi map was to slow the AI tech rate down. If the AI's can trade won't they get to space before we can get off our island?

plarq said:

The UU is 5,7,1 Anzac Rifleman in that map!

Click to expand...

OK, my bad, I was reading the description off the civ and it was copied from the English one. Fact is, it's easy enough to change the UU to be whatever desired, and the team has played a world map as Argentina and Egypt. It could even be a sipahi, you just go into editor and assign the sipahi to Australia and the anzac to a barbarian chiefdom.

@AndrewN: It may not be significantly different with 16 civs on a continent vs twice that many on an archipelago. Don't know.

lurker's comment:
I'm very interested to see how this game turns out. Good luck