r_rolo1
King of myself
Welcome to the 49th edition of the Lonely Hearts Club for BTS. In the Lonely Hearts Club we explore strategies to cope with one of the most dreaded situations in Civ IV ( possibly the main reason for reloads after the military collapse one 
): starting in isolation....
For the 49th game in BTS the chosen leader was Mao Zedong :
I always wondered why Firaxis choosed two of the more anti-Confuncian leaders that China had to represent the civilization in the game. the First Emperor and the CHINESE_LEADER ( as it is called in the XML files
), the leader that we are going to use this time.....
History and Firaxis choices aside, in game Mao is normally considered a average to weak leader by a lot of people. The fact is that he is Exp/Pro and none of those traits is considered strong, especially Pro ( with or without hammer overflow ) ...Exp has still some fans due to the cheaper workers and granaries. Well, mao is definitely the easiest leader to play in my opinion, but having tough defenders and cheaper workers is nothing to shun about. China also has a very good UB for cultural wins and a UU, that, in spite of being one of the best in game if well used, that will not be that useful in isolation... This is a interesting, but seemingly hard combo to use in a LHC
His UU
His UB
The start (Thanks to DanF for the solution of the unit change of place .... The warrior/scout should appear always in the same place from now on, really ):
Lovely, start between 2 seas withouth fishing
And to add, if you don't move the settler, you can't get both the seafood . Oh, and the very useful plains silk forest ...... OTOH this surely means that there is a food resource in the fogged tiles in the north of of the BFC, and we have stone in the BFC as well. I wonder what can be taken from here.....
Regarding the saves ( if you're using DanF change to the WB files load, skip this ): given some complaints about the efects of the AI starting without archery in high levels ( giving a unfair advantage to AI that have early UU and/or have early warmongering tendencies ), I decided to make 3 WB saves ( all in the same zip file ). The WB saves are equal except for the fact that one of them ( labeled Monarch ) has all of the AI with archery as starting tech ( corresponding to a game started in Monarch ), one ( labeled Immortal ) has all of the AI with archery,hunting and agriculture as starting tech ( corresponding to a game started in Immortal ) while the last is the corresponding to a game starting in Noble ( labeled Noble ). All WB saves are playable in all levels, but ( for a example ) if you use the Monarch one the AI will start with archery ( and archers ) in any level. This has only a slight effect in the human directly ( mainly via the garrisons of barb cities ), but has a huge effect on the AI gaming in the outer lands ( avoiding scenarios like Pacal, Shaka or Sitting Bull to take all the barb cities and becoming moguls ). I strongly recommend the usage of the Monarch save if you want to play in Monarch+ and the Immortal at Immortal/Deity.... All the speeds are working well ( no more games ending in 1900 ) The saves are zipped... you only have to unzip this to the worldbuilder saves or for the PublicMaps folder ( either one will do ) and load it from the scenarios.
Any problem PM me...
P.S WB saves are crosscompatible between 3.13 ( and earlier ) and 3.17 ( and later ) if they don't have No Espionage ticked. No problem with the patches here And as WB saves are no more than text files and Vanilla and Warlords WB are almost equal, you can play this if you exchange the non-Vanilla ( or non-warlords ) stuff ( in here it will be only leaders and civs eventually )
Again a small request ( not mandatory ) :
We ask the participants to do, if possible, a write-up with the victory save and a description of your game ( strategies, techs researched, wars,...). All the info should be in spoiler tags ( to not disturb other people's games ). If you want ( we would like to ) post reports at this moments of the game:
Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.
Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.
Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).
Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).
The last words are to wish good luck to all
. And let the games begin!
P.S We don't have any kind of problem with defeats and reruns. Just play and enjoy
): starting in isolation....For the 49th game in BTS the chosen leader was Mao Zedong :
Spoiler :
I always wondered why Firaxis choosed two of the more anti-Confuncian leaders that China had to represent the civilization in the game. the First Emperor and the CHINESE_LEADER ( as it is called in the XML files
), the leader that we are going to use this time..... History and Firaxis choices aside, in game Mao is normally considered a average to weak leader by a lot of people. The fact is that he is Exp/Pro and none of those traits is considered strong, especially Pro ( with or without hammer overflow ) ...Exp has still some fans due to the cheaper workers and granaries. Well, mao is definitely the easiest leader to play in my opinion, but having tough defenders and cheaper workers is nothing to shun about. China also has a very good UB for cultural wins and a UU, that, in spite of being one of the best in game if well used, that will not be that useful in isolation... This is a interesting, but seemingly hard combo to use in a LHC
His UU
Spoiler :
One of the strongest UU in game most surely.... the Chu-no-ku ( like all the Chinese related stuff in this game, horribly misspelled ) is a beefed xbow that , besides the extra first strikes ( that would be good already ), can deal collateral damage. this means that a Chu-no-ku stack can take cities with ease, not needing the ubiquotous catapults baggage that most of Civ IV armies of that time have to carry. Of course that in isolation, as most of the pre-rifle UU, they will be mostly useless
His UB
Spoiler :
Ok, a theatre that is also a culture multiplier... the pavillion is a huge asset for a culture win. Not much to say in here: if you are pursuing a cultural win you'll want them most surely ( like I said elsewhere I'm not too fond of culture wins, but i must reckon that a cheap culture multiplier that also givesis a good asset to have, even without pursuing a culture win )
The start (Thanks to DanF for the solution of the unit change of place
.... The warrior/scout should appear always in the same place from now on, really ):Spoiler :
Lovely, start between 2 seas withouth fishing
And to add, if you don't move the settler, you can't get both the seafood . Oh, and the very useful plains silk forest ...... OTOH this surely means that there is a food resource in the fogged tiles in the north of of the BFC, and we have stone in the BFC as well. I wonder what can be taken from here.....Regarding the saves ( if you're using DanF change to the WB files load, skip this ): given some complaints about the efects of the AI starting without archery in high levels ( giving a unfair advantage to AI that have early UU and/or have early warmongering tendencies ), I decided to make 3 WB saves ( all in the same zip file ). The WB saves are equal except for the fact that one of them ( labeled Monarch ) has all of the AI with archery as starting tech ( corresponding to a game started in Monarch ), one ( labeled Immortal ) has all of the AI with archery,hunting and agriculture as starting tech ( corresponding to a game started in Immortal ) while the last is the corresponding to a game starting in Noble ( labeled Noble ). All WB saves are playable in all levels, but ( for a example ) if you use the Monarch one the AI will start with archery ( and archers ) in any level. This has only a slight effect in the human directly ( mainly via the garrisons of barb cities ), but has a huge effect on the AI gaming in the outer lands ( avoiding scenarios like Pacal, Shaka or Sitting Bull to take all the barb cities and becoming moguls ). I strongly recommend the usage of the Monarch save if you want to play in Monarch+ and the Immortal at Immortal/Deity.... All the speeds are working well ( no more games ending in 1900 ) The saves are zipped... you only have to unzip this to the worldbuilder saves or for the PublicMaps folder ( either one will do ) and load it from the scenarios.
Any problem PM me...
P.S WB saves are crosscompatible between 3.13 ( and earlier ) and 3.17 ( and later ) if they don't have No Espionage ticked. No problem with the patches here
And as WB saves are no more than text files and Vanilla and Warlords WB are almost equal, you can play this if you exchange the non-Vanilla ( or non-warlords ) stuff ( in here it will be only leaders and civs eventually )Again a small request ( not mandatory
) :We ask the participants to do, if possible, a write-up with the victory save and a description of your game ( strategies, techs researched, wars,...). All the info should be in spoiler tags ( to not disturb other people's games ). If you want ( we would like to
) post reports at this moments of the game:Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.
Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.
Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).
Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).
The last words are to wish good luck to all
. And let the games begin!P.S We don't have any kind of problem with defeats and reruns. Just play and enjoy
.
Shwedagon Pagoda, Parthenon, Great Library.
, I gave up on it with all the early wonder spamming someone was doing. I'm now about to settle my 14th and last city, sitting on zero gold, teching towards Civil Service.
. I gave in to his demands, even when he asked for me to change to nationhood from free speech. Took the turns of nationhood to draft up defences. Even managed to sign a defence pact with De Gaulle, but a few turns later he declared anyway. However, he attacked in the north east far away from my cultural cities. Defences where now sufficient anyway and fended him off. Turtled away to victory in 1876.
