Me v Mate. Representation too powerful?

Hi All,

I'd really appreciate your opinions on the following scenario:

Me and a mate play Civ4 BTS against each other like we play a game of chess - we try to get the starting position as equal as possible:

- we play the same civ
- we discuss our first city placement to ensure they are as equal as possible.
- No AIs, just me v him
- Conquest only
- Large Pangea
- Epic speed
- Noble
- No goody huts
- No random events

We seem to be finding that whoever gets the pyramids first and goes to Representation first gets a large advantage:

- Better early research
- Difficult for non Rep opponent to attack on this size map and disrupt this research
- Defending in general is always easier it seems.

So it seems that a recipe for winning is:
- be first to pyramids - go to Representation
- build an army just big enough to defend yourself
- build wonders and pop those great people that are so good under representation
- win the tech race and eventually overpower your opponent with better units.

How can the non Representation opponent counter this? We're beginning to think that Representation is a game breaker in our setup and disallowing the move to Representation with pyramids.

I'd love to get all your thoughts on this.

Cheers

I have never played with two human players on an empty large Pangaea, but it would make sense that a Pyramids build may be overpowered here.

Large map, 2 players. That really musses with the dynamics. They Pyramids are a very powerful wonder stock settings. The counter-balance to them is that they are very expensive thus being risky to build. Risky because other teams might invest that significant hammer cost in settlers and gobble up the good land. Risky because a close opponent may invest those hammers in axes and just take the pyramids.

These settings almost totally negate that risk. On a large Pangaea alone it would seem like you likely start far enough away that you are neither going to be crowded out of much room for settling nor are you at much risk of being caught with your pants down by your friend rushing. If you play with barbs on, all that empty room is going to spawn tons of them further separating you two. These factors(at least I am guessing) are going to do away with most of the opportunity cost of building this wonder.

To complicate this matter your settings will also seem to increase the relative gain of running early representation. Since there are no AIs to tech trade with, the self-research boost is more powerful. Pangaea and no foreign trade also slam the other competing "overpowered" economic wonder of this era, the Great Lighthouse, putting even more emphasis on the Pyramids race.

Simple solution: Run a smaller map. If that is unsatisfactory, just ban the Pyramids.

Uhm, well if you are both going for Pyramids and one of you fails to get it then I would think you would fall behind.

Pyramids is a very expensive wonder at a very crucial time, the real test to see how balanced it is to decide that one of you goes for it and the other one expands/plays normally.when you go for Pyramids you usually force yourself to remain at one or two cities, because you will be spending your resources on getting the wonder rather then settler/worker and expand.

500 hammers means 5 settlers, that means 5 potential city spots and when you consider that settlers can be built on food and can be whipped out faster and the hammer/food yield spread around the cities that number goes up.

Realisticly however while one of you may have 2 cities and Pyramids the other may have 5-6 cities because he put his hammers in expanding instead and those 5 cities may have settled gold/silver/gems,floodplains or mass food any of which will mean you can get good beakers from.

If you both go for it and one of you fail, which one of you will, then it will hurt, thats why those early wonders are so risky, not getting them can be very painful for your empire.

Large Panagea with only 2 players is a very unusual setting. The Pyramids could very well be too powerful here. I think the defensive advantage comes from having a tech lead through representation. On this setting, a number of the wonders would be useless or very powerful. AP is the most powerful wonder, but would only give you the hammers here - probably not worth it.

On a more normal game, the Pyramids carry significant risks. One, you might lose out getting it. Two, your opponent might invest in a military and take the Pyramids from you. It also represents a significant cost of not getting as much land settled. In your situation, there's so much land there's no risk in the early game of the good land around you being taken.

What's the barbarian setting? If it's raging, you might call the Great Wall too powerful.

The guy making the pyramids should get stomped every single time. It's only usable when there are many players afraid to make a move. In a 1v1 match, giving up 500 early hammers is just throwing away the game. It's more like 1000 hammers because you give up expansion for them.

With a large map and just 2 people, luxuries aren't going to be hard to find. The extra science per specialist is the only solid benefit to representation, but it's not that great because the other guy can expand much more. It's just a short term economic advantage at the expense of long term size, and short term military strength.

The pyramid guy might get to catapults and longbows first, at best, but the larger opponent should catch up by the mace era. And this is if the pyramid guy even lives that long.

Ataxerxes - normal barbs - not raging

Higher game - don't really understand your suggestion. Yes, you can get cities out quicker but your economy will tank and your research will be even slower. You may have more cities but they will be easy pickings for the technologically superior guy with Representation?

I think they're suggesting that if you're roughly twice as big, you can run twice as many scientists, negating any advantage from the pyramids.

I guess the question is, what have you tried? My first thought would be to forego any wonders, REX out as much as possible, whip a stack of 10-12 chariots and try a pillage/choke strategy, but maybe the map's too big to make that practical? How far away is your opponent likely to be?

The other side of the large pangea map

Representation too powerful?

The answer to this question is yes. I'm pretty sure nothing can compete science-wise on the map you are using.

Follow dr_s's advice. I'm pretty sure you can chariot rush even across that distance. Build three cities and pump out (war) chariots. He should be pretty defenseless.

I'm not even sure going for the Pyramids is even a good idea under these circumstances. Unlimited land to expand, it seems tempting to REX keeping your net income around zero at 100% gold and eventually overwhelm the opponent once many maturing cottages kick in.

Unfortunately, doing so well requires careful management of one's cities, and if you're not playing via pitboss or something it's going to be draining and not very fun at all.

Iranon said:

I'm not even sure going for the Pyramids is even a good idea under these circumstances. Unlimited land to expand, it seems tempting to REX keeping your net income around zero at 100% gold and eventually overwhelm the opponent once many maturing cottages kick in.

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This approach will leave you severely lagging in research for too long. If you have some kind of non-aggression agreement it could work, but otherwise you will be vulnerable to superior units and probably superior production. A far-flung, barely solvent, backwards, commerce-focused empire is going to be very hard to defend.

with your set up the only counter is for the other guy to not even attempt to build pyramids.

having said that representation gives the pyramid builder time to catch up and if he spams cottages he can make up for having fewer cities....

I thing your settings are the problem. if your playing this kind of match just play a duel or balanced map. if your playing pangea for the random factor but then eliminating all of the other randomness then you guys should consider banning things. but once you start banning things you will start finding all kinds of other things that are unballancing...

Civ is not Chess.

wolfblue said:

Civ is not Chess.

Click to expand...

Actually civ is chess.Oh your going for Pyramids?I'll go for the axeman wonder, we'll see who wins that race.

Hi guys, cheers for the responses,

The reason we play a large map is because on a smaller map the guy who hooks up metal first tends to win. On a larger map you have time to defend against this.

Not come across a balanced map - what is that?

cheers

Also,

The Rep guy wins the Liberalism race and gets universities up quicker

Could having larger population cities with Hereditary Rule be a valid setup?

It could.Lets take the bonuses from Rep as opposed to no Rep. with Rep you get 3 happy in 5 biggest cities at normal size I believe.

To get that with HR instead you would have to get 3 garrison troops for 5 cities, so 15 troops total.

If you only use warriors and can use all out warriors thats 45 hammers for each city multiply that by 5 and you get 225.Thats is quite a bit less that no bonus Pyramides and right under Pyramids with one of the bonuses.The warriors also give you extra bonus by defending your cities.If you use archers it comes to 375.More likely you'll end up with a mix of warriors and archers, I would say something like 10 warriors/5 archers. 150+125= 275 which is just above Pyramids with 1 bonus.

Now the other bonus, +3 extra beakers.No matter which way you go, you will have to feed the specialists the big advantage of Rep is that you get more bang for your buck, For every two scientist you bassically get one free and guess what, thats exactly how much you can run before CS, Once CS kicks in Rep starts becoming crazy, but I guess thats no surprise to anyone that Rep and CS combo is crazy, the specialist themself become much more flexible after CS with Rep because if you need more gold you simply run merchants and still get beakers for it, same with the prophet and artist.


Before CS Rep is only decent but after it the real power of it kicks in,because it's still limited in the amount of specialist you can run.Having written this I guess the advise is,to not trade CoL to the person that built the Pyramids, make them have to research it themself.Also try to attack and take the Pyramide city before the person gets to CoL.

If your opponent has taken the upper road in the tech tree meaning writing>alphabet/aesthetics/maths,---->CoL then you have some time to build a bigger number army, which you can reinforce with elephants/catapults if you decided to go that way too, you should have enough time to build a few elephants/catapults before he gets to CoL just make sure you were already building axeman/swords

If however your opponent went with the lower road meditation/polytheism,priesthood,CoL.You wont have as much times as he can get to CoL pretty fast with oracle, in which case you will have to go with a smaller number.

But remember even if you do let the opponent get CoL that doesnt not mean you should quit, you still can take him on at anytime, just know that Rep power would have kicked in at that point.


As i said before the power of Pyramids/Rep isnt so much about getting the pyramids or not getting them,but more in building it or not.

Cheers - but:

Also try to attack and take the Pyramids city before the person gets to CoL?

Not gonna happen against a human in this setup.

squoink said:

Cheers - but:

Also try to attack and take the Pyramids city before the person gets to CoL?

Not gonna happen against a human in this setup.

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I actually had a quick look at how feasible a chariot rush is on this map (with hatty). If he goes all out for the pyramids, and especially if he doesn't know you're coming, you will annihilate him. In fact it's quite likely that one war chariot would be enough. It only takes about 20 turns to get from one side of the map to the other.

Relies on having horses though.

Is it possible to know if an opponent is building a wonder prior to it's completion? That way you can plan your game accordingly.

Yeah it definitely relies on horses. Horses aren't uncommon though. Most of the time you can get them with your second city, in this case even if it is miles away from your capital.

I was merely testing your supposition that getting the pyramids is unbeatable, and therefore with the assumption that your opponent will make every effort to build them as quickly as possible. Now, it seems, he mightn't even build them. I don't know what to say about this turn of events.