[Warlords] WOTM 33 Final Spoiler

[babybluepants]

WOTM 33 Final Spoiler

So how did your game go after 1AD? Please tell everyone and discuss it in this thread, subject to...

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How did you progress after 1 AD?
What did you learn?
Feedback on game concept is welcome.

[JungleIII]

Dang... LONG game - Very Big Map.

Plan was simple, beeline to Cossack, take over world. Didn't know it was a gigantic map...

Attacked Japan first, with Knights to warm up and get some experience. Not really a problem attacking teams... just make sure you have enough for long battles and each major foray, had to go into anarchy the last 4-5 turns of wars to prevent total loss of all my funds... Even with 100% culture the cities were going backwards.

Anyway, used 62 Cossack to take out the first two teams of three which were a pushover with Longbowman to defend against my mighty Cossacks. When the last team of England, Mansa and Rome - had to switch to 50 infantry, backed up by the cossacks who stopped the counter assaults.

If I had known the map was so big, I might have tried a culture game... but I suck at the boring aspects of culture wins...

Domination win with 69,538 points at 72% of world covered.

[MarleysGh0st]

I was concerned about taking on a team single handedly, particularly with the possibility of another team joining against me in a dogpile. So, while I finished the Great Library, Colossus and University of Sankore and made Moscow my GP farm, I kept waiting for a warmongering ally as the years marched on.

In 1050, I was able to bribe Bismarck/Brennus/Tokugawa to attack Huayna Capac/Hannibal/Mehmet. I waited a turn, then joined the war in 1060. I captured two cities on the long island to Russia's southwest, before the teams made peace in 1180 and I followed their example.

Another era of peace followed (squandering my early advantage with Military Traditions/cossacks, achieved in 1130) until B/B/T declared war on Elizabeth/Mansu Musa/Julius in 1605 and I joined them in 1615. I proceeded to capture four more island cities in the archipelago stretching to the southwest and one English city on their continent, while the two teams made peace in 1655.

In 1675, HC/H/M declared war on me. There was the dogpile I didn't want to fight! Luckily E/MM/J were willing to make peace and B/B/T were willing to take another tech bribe to join this new war. I captured two of HC's island cities and three on the mainland, including his capital, before Hannibal and Mehmet arrived with large stacks of cavalry and trebuchets launching effective counterattacks against my infantry. I signed a peace treaty in 1775 to protect my conquests.

Somewhat to my surprise, the teams continued to war with each other, so when the ten turns of the peace treaty expired, I rejoined the war in 1812. I had captured two more Inca cities and was a turn away from capturing their last one when that team became vassals of B/B/T in 1824! I should note that in all the wars between the teams, not a single city ever changed hands between them! But, of course, with Russian being smaller than the combined population/area of the teams, they hadn't even been willing to talk to me.

Well, this was a sign that it was time to switch goals and try to exploit my tech lead in a space race. I completed the Apollo Program in 1868. B/B/T did so in 1886 and E/MM/J did in 1888. A well-timed GE helped me complete the Space Elevator in 1927 and I had the space ship competed for a victory in 1940, with a score of 15349 points, while the teams were still missing at least a couple essential techs.

I'm still curious about how the tech research works in a team vs. individual game. The teams combine their research, but it appears that they also combine the cost of researching a technology? If they didn't, I don't see how I was managing to stay ahead of that race.

[srad]

First Spoiler: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpo...31&postcount=3

Goal: Fast conquest; high score
Result: Domination in 1585AD; 179k

400AD: The wars started: Declared on Toku's team with Maces and Cats. Captured the marble city and I was lucky to build The Great Library.
520AD: Hannibal's team backstabbed me and captured a small undefended island city
960AD: MT -> Reinforced the Toku team SOD with Cossacks
1020AD: Astro -> Shipped cossacks to Hannibal's team and declared war. Now I'm running two wars and war weariness hurts. Hannibals team capitulated first.
1160AD: Communism -> The Kremlin for more efficient whipping + state property for lowering maintenance costs.

At this time I had all the techs I wanted and from there on the game was 'only' war logistics. But it took time... during 1580AD I crossed the domination limit while fighting Mansa's team. I thought some time about ceasing fire and gifting back cities but I was war tired and accepted the victory.

I had 19 angry faces from war weariness in the capital - running police state!

Nice game, thanks babybluepants!

[Fluroscent]

Originally Posted by JungleIII

Dang... LONG game - Very Big Map.

Somewhat what I was about to post. I cannot remember ever before completing one or two turns and then saying phew, I can't take any more, let's continue later.
Over 10H play time I think is a record time for me too.

So many cities, so much to do. And so poorly played, I completely overlooked that domination took a whopping 70% land here. I stopped building military way too soon, and for no other reason that it was tedious shipping troops around .

Oh well, did achieve domination in the 1600s, almost entirely by cossacks. Eliminated Toku's and the southern block entirely and captured some of the last team in the end to trigger domination.

Game was way easier than expected otherwise. The Toku block might as well not have been teamed (except they all seemingly adopted Toku's diplo policy ), I finished Toku without the other two even sending a single unit to help.
Only war weariness was an issue. Completely insane amounts, even having an impact with Police State + Jails (Happy I didn't skip Pyramids!). Must have been like 40+ unhappy faces if I didn't have those

Somehow regret not stopping warring after capturing one block and settling in for space/diplo. I now know I prefer peaceful micromanagement to managing invasion warfare at this scale.

[DynamicSpirit]

Originally Posted by Fluroscent

Game was way easier than expected otherwise. The Toku block might as well not have been teamed (except they all seemingly adopted Toku's diplo policy ), I finished Toku without the other two even sending a single unit to help.
Only war weariness was an issue. Completely insane amounts, even having an impact with Police State + Jails (Happy I didn't skip Pyramids!). Must have been like 40+ unhappy faces if I didn't have those

Totally agree with you on both lack of AI cooperation and war weariness.

I had Rome declare on me at one point. I proceeded to capture several cities in southern England without ever seeing Roman or Mali forces.

And in a later war with the same team, I had some cities on +9 war weariness, despite running police state and having jails in those same cities.

The other wierd thing about teams in wartime was - for a long time I was desparate for peace so I could kill the war weariness, but it seemed that no matter how many cities I captured, the team expected me to bribe them for peace. Usually the price was the last city I'd captured. It was only after I'd vanquished Elizabeth and Rome was down to a few remnants that they started offering to pay me. But God, once Mansa Musa was completely on his own, the turnaround was amazing: He was willing to offer capitulation and his best city! (which to my enduring frustration I refused because I couldn't see enough of the map to realize it was his best city, so assumed based on normal AI performance it was some icebound size 1 shack. I think that's first time I've negotiated myself a substantially worse deal than the AI initially offered!

Oh, I got a space victory, but it was very disappointing. Post 1900AD. I think too much warring and war weariness in the mid-late game screwed me over.

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, I got my Diplo Victory.

I took the Challenger save. Man, oh man, do I dislike Quick Game Speed!

My first "war" was to capture MY island (the Marble) from Toku. The 7 Chariots that I used were already obsolete by the time that I could consider shipping them over to his mainland.


From there it was just a slow slog. I never really did get any help in the war because the Huayna/Mehmed/Hannibal team went into We Have Our Hands Full mode early on and then never, ever did declare war on anyone!

I was still fighting the war at the end of the game when I won thanks to H/M/H voting unanimously for me. I have no idea if they vote as a team or individually, but I pleased their entire team (all Friendly with me) so they all voted for me.

Toku and Brennus had bit the dust and Bismarck would have been eliminated before the next vote had I not won on the first Diplo Victory vote.


As for feedback... it was interesting and fun but not an experience that I'd like to see repeated for a long time. The team dynamic really throws the game into crazy-mode. For example, being declared upon could easily upset the balance of the game far more than in a normal game. Also, one bad trade with someone's Worst Enemy and another team will hate your guts for hundreds of years! There are just too many ways for the experience to turn out as a frustrating one, in my opinion.


If we were to have a team-based game again, I'd suggest making teams of two AIs. The game could still involve the team concept but then you wouldn't almost automatically be trading with someone's Worst Enemy as soon as you make a single trade and the game could still be manageable without having to have too many AIs in the game (i.e. without one's computer lagging so much that one has to Alt + Tab every 2 turns of gameplay, like I had to do for this map).


I can't be certain, but I am guessing that War Weariness is team-based and that by eliminating a team member, you don't reduce the War Weariness accrued for having killed that Civ's troops, since the number wouldn't go down until you made Peace with the team or eliminated the entire team. It appeared to be that way, anyway, seeing as how War Weariness was through the roof at the end of my game even though I was only at war with a single AI, having killed off Bismarck's teammates. Call it the ghosts of Toku and Brennus still haunting me to the end.


An interesting tidbit was that in recent games, I have been forgetting about Economics and have missed the free Great Merchant. I wasn't going to let that same situation happen in this game. However, once I got that free Great Merchant, I went on towards teching Scientific Method and then teched towards Mass Media. Oops! I'd forgotten about Liberalism! In the end, it didn't really matter since my tech pace was pretty good, but I accidentally allowed the Elizabeth/Mansa/Julius team to steal Liberalism out from under my nose!

Originally Posted by DynamicSpirit

But God, once Mansa Musa was completely on his own, the turnaround was amazing: He was willing to offer capitulation and his best city!

I had the same situation arise with Bismarck--he was willing to capitulate and to give me his large-sized Holy City as part of the deal. I guess that "war success" probably applies to all of a team's units but probably gets divided by the number of teammates that are alive or something along those lines, meaning that you get credit for having destroyed almost 3 times as many units!

[kcd_swede]

I planned on going conquest, but at the end decided that delaying finish to get conquest instead of taking the dom victory now wasn't worth it.

When Toku beat my settler to the Marble island, I re-routed my settler to his continent. I had axemen ready to take Satsuma very quickly, as I was already preparing to go to war against him. By the time I wiped out Toku completely, I was using mace and cats, pretty much. I followed military techs, and used Liberalism to take Mil Trad and get Cossaks in high gear. Cannons was next, and that was pretty much all I needed up until the very end when the last team (rome/mansa/england) got infantry.

Anyhow, While taking down Toku, I was already half way through the Celts before he was dead. I still had to kill all of the Celts except an island city, and half of germany before they would capitulate. That first cap is always the hardest, esp in a team where they over-rate their power due to having team members (thus total elimination of one is very useful). The game is in the bag at this point. But still have to finish it off.

I took my cossaks/cannons south to carthage/green/inca and repeat the process. Sorry, green team eliminated first, don't even remember who it was. Otto? Anyhow, they all had island cities now, so total elim is too tedious. Just proceed to carthage, taking all but his island city. I took maybe one or two wonder-heavy cities from the Incas before letting them gift me their #2 city in a capitulation.

Then on to england + rome simultaneously... left Masna alone, pretty much. Had infantry and artillery mostly for this stage, and cossaks just to pillage and take on the stray cavalry or two. Still mostly rifles here... My tanks arrive at the very end taking the last two or three roman cities. Still won't cap... but I'm at 69.98% and can either give away cities or win dom next turn. I vote the latter, so I shop around the three team members to see who gives me the best city in the peace. Mansa gives me Tadmeka, and I'm over the limit.

WW was high, but I not so bad I ever needed to use Police State... did build a jail or two in my core cities, but didn't really need to. A little unhappiness is no big deal... Unhappy faces are simply whipped away into infantry and artillery. I never switched from slavery this game. The challenge here was logistics of getting troops where you need them when you need them. I didn't do that so well, despite having large navy of transports and destroyers... they always seemed to have to cross the world to pick up troops.

Anyhow... it wasn't the nice easy Noble level game I had been hoping for. Once I figured out it was teams, I didn't think staying ahead in a tech race for Space was viable, though after playing it I think it would have been trivial... they were really slow.

Early Oxford was nice. Collossus and GLH and GLib and Nat Epic helped a lot. Other wonders were many, but pretty much captured. Except Stat of Lib... that was just for fun.

I need to plan better, though. I didn't really keep focus on any specific goal. Once the game gets too big, I get very careless, too. Its not like the AI will suddenly reverse their fates, so I stop optimizing about the same time my number of cities gets to 15-20. So I guess really my main goal was to maximize the fun. And I had fun, so I call it a success!

[Lexad]

Went for a quick culture. Was declared by all teams at pleased except Toku's, whom I attacked myself to grab a GP-generator on the island south from me. For that reason took Rifles with Liber but had no war since then - an overcautious move that cost me ~10 turns, a bit below 7% of game. Thanc for the game, didn't find it tedious at all )

[neilmeister]

Strategy was obvious, beeline Cossacks and romp.

Settling went really well. Got marble island, the 2 nice islands to the SW, and the fur island. Got too friendly with Toku, and this cost me as by the time I finally met HC's team, they hated them, and therefore me as well.

Got Stonehenge, GLH, Mids and GW.
Missed Oracle by 2 turns (IIRC), I was going to take MC, for Colossus.
Missed Colossus by 1 turn , but lucky me, I can see it across the water in Toku's cap. In hindsight I should have gone to war earlier, but I was kind of expecting the german hordes to come to Toku's aid.

Was gearing up to smite Toku with Maces, but decided to wait for Cossacks. Eliminated him without seeing a german or celtic unit. 2 more wars were fought, almost wiped out Brennus (he escaped to a 1 tile island).

After that, decided to lay low and go for space (big surprise, hey?).

All was going well until my best trading partner, HC/Mehmed/Hannibal? decided to invade. It was totally out of the blue, and they caught me with my pants down. Lost 1 crappy city before my Cossacks got back from the German front.

Decided to make Mehmed pay, bigtime. Razed his cap, shrined holy city, and 4 others for good measure before they would even talk. Lucky really, WW was starting to be a real pain, and I had recently diverted my cities production back to military to ensure I got peace, one way or another.

Standard mistakes were made, like revolting in a Golden Age. (at least it was only 1 turn, but I had delayed switching for 10 turns in anticipation of Taj).

First GP GA was while building Apollo. Second while building parts. Missed out on a third GA 3 times, all I needed was a prophet or an artist. Its not often you curse all the bloody GE's turning up.


Love the team game thing, it really was something I have never played before.
Agree with the others, this was a bit of a slog at times, but this was more due to the size of the map methinks.

edit: team game really messed with the standard space strategy of tech brokering and maintaining 100% research through tech sales.

[lymond]

1795 AD Culture

My original intent for this game was to expand on my landmass and surrounding islands while teching up a military advantage pre and post Cossack and take on the world. I sent out scouting workboat early to start meeting the AI. Of course, I met Toku early, but met the Incas first by sea.

I built a lot of the early wonders - Oracle, Mids, Henge, GLH. GLH was a big goal as I planned to leverage the trade routes from all the islands. At about 1AD when I stopped for a time, I'd settled all the mainland and the marble island, and had a settler/galley ready to ship down to the SW islands. Boom! Mehmed settled there from far away. I hate when the AI does that - and he hadn't come close to filling out his own land. In frustration, I quit the game for a while to look at it later with fresh perspective.

When I returned, I though to myself that this map is geared quite nicely for Culture. We have stone/marble and good Philo Leader. It's not too early to go for it.

I got Conf from CoL for my first religion (I either Oracled it or CS - can't remember) and then subsequently got every one of the other religions - the AIs weren't even close. I sunk a GP into DR but it probably wasn't worth it since I would have teched it anyway - just trying to speed things along. Actually, it probably was...the sooner you get that religion and its culture up and running the better.

I tried to whip out mishes as fast as possible while wonder whoring in Moscow. Moscow was a good city, but in hindsight I think I should have moved it to the city on the N central coast that I think would have more production. I used the whip liberally though to get overflow into wonders.

As for diplo, I did not adopt a religion until way too late. I even ran OR without a religion simply to be able to pump mishes in cities other than the L cities so they could focus on culture buildings. However, not getting the OR bonus certainly delayed victory. Then again, getting attacked would have as well. I never had great relations with the teams. In fact, I never got open borders with Toku's team - nerfing the GLH a bit. Only one war was declared when Team Hyuana Dow'd Team Lizzy but it didn't last long. When I switch to Conf later to get the Pac bonus, Team Toku and Team Hyuana went into WHEOOHRN mode. I could clearly see Toku amassing troops and ships on his coast to attack, but it never came before I hit L in every city.

The Team dynamics were odd. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. The diplo deal was the weirdest thing as 1AI's relations effected the whole team causing me to get "trade with worst enemy" hits. I still don't know how to determine worst enemy on Warlords. I thought they had to be in the red.

I feel pretty decent about the culture victory, but there were several questionable things I did that might have improved the outcome, including:

1) I had a large tech lead for the majority of the game - at least until I went full culture mod. As a result, I decided to hold Lib for BIO which is the tech I usually deem the "stop point" for culture. What I failed to remember at the time of this decision was that Lib is actually a key culture tech for the Free Speech civic. So I ended up not running that civic for quite some time. Also I should have put more emphasis on bee-lining the BIO prereqs but grabbed some war techs just for fear of being attacked.

2) A decision to go culture should have been made sooner. I got Conf much sooner that 1AD but failed to spread it earlier than I could have. I never did get even one AI religion in any of my cities. Maybe settling of few more islands instead of just my nine cities would have increased the odds.

All in all, it was fun map and nice twists with the teams. I thought they would tech a bit better than they atually did though.

[neilmeister]

Originally Posted by lymond

I still don't know how to determine worst enemy on Warlords. I thought they had to be in the red.

Isn't it the AI they dislike the most. ie, if they are +5 with everyone except 1 AI, who is at +4, then that is the 'worst enemy' in terms of trades.

[lymond]

Hmmm...maybe so. But it seems that often AIs have no worse enemy at all at times - at least in BTS. Warlords overall seems more sensitive to trading with WEs. I was getting hit with trading resources a lot and that is generally rarely an issue in BTS once you know the AIs for a little while - and none of the "unmet" crapola.

I like to know what the parameters are for Warlords. Ha....actually there are a lot of things I can't figure out in Warlords simply because I never really played it much, except a few years ago when I was a super-newb and played the scenarios (poorly ). I just tried to apply all I've learned playing BTS as best I can with some tweaks mainly with the tech tree and siege.

I wasn't sure but there might have been a team dynamic to the WE. Say if an AI is WE of another AI, but you trade with another member of the team, you might still get the WE hit. I'm not sure of that though since I could not determine who the WE.

[Dhoomstriker]

Originally Posted by lymond

I still don't know how to determine worst enemy on Warlords. I thought they had to be in the red.

My understanding is that, independent of game version (Vanilla, Warlords, or BtS), a Worst Enemy is selected from amongst all of the players (other AIs and the human player) that an AI is Annoyed or Furious with.

If they feel Cautious or better towards all other players, then they will not have a Worst Enemy.

If they are Annoyed or Furious with more than one player, then it is generally the lowest attitude that will garner the Worst Enemy status... i.e. if they are -3 Furious and -4 Furious towards different players, the -4 Furious should become the Worst Enemy.

That said, Worst Enemy status from one player to another isn't always instantaneous and can sometimes take some turns to "kick in"--making the AIs seem a little less fickle in their hatred (i.e. more consistent in their hatred).


For Vanilla and Warlords, what I do is click on a Leader's name at the bottom right of the main screen, read what they said to me, and then press the Escape key. Then, I will keep repeating this process until the randomly-selected message is one that talks about who their Worst Enemy is. It doesn't take that long to do and you can even "pre-click" ahead of a laggy interface, so that the trading window will open as soon as your CPU and graphics card "catch up" with your clicking actions.

If an AI is Cautious, Pleased, or Friendly towards all other players, then don't bother with this procedure, as you won't see a single message about who their Worst Enemy is, as they won't have one. Otherwise, it's a worthwhile technique--an extra 10 to 30 seconds, depending upon how fast your computer is and how lucky you are with the random messages--which can save you hours of headaches for not having traded with an AI's Worst Enemy.


In this game, things were slightly different, since attitudes are averaged and floored. So, if you wanted Open Borders with Toku's team, which would require you to get the team to Pleased since that's the attitude that Toku requires, it would not be sufficient to have 2 of that team's members be Pleased towards you with one of them being Cautious towards you, as those values would be "floored" down to a "team attitude" of being Cautious towards you. You would have instead needed either all 3 of them to have been Pleased with you or one Cautious, one Pleased, and one Friendly towards you, in order to garner Open Borders.

The implication here for Worst Enemy status is that Team A has nine attitudes towards Team B that get factored in together. So, if Team A Member 1 is Cautious with all 3 members of Team B, if Team A Member 2 is similarly Cautious with all 3 members of Team B, while Team A Member 3 is Annoyed, Cautious, and Cautious with the members of Team B, then the overall attitude will be Team A is Annoyed with Team B and thus Team A will have a Worst Enemy--which could be Team B unless Team A mutually hates another team (we were a team of 1 player) even more.


Note that I'm not sure how attitude versus absolute Diplomacy modifiers are ranked... like, say, outside of the team concept, if AI #1 is Annoyed towards AI #2 at -5 attitude but is Furious towards AI #3 at -2 attitude, I don't know which one of AI #2 or AI #3 will be AI #1's Worst Enemy. In that case, though, I'd just keep "talking to" AI #1 and then "walking away" from talking with AI #1 until AI #1 revealed their true feelings to me.

[kcd_swede]

Originally Posted by lymond

I wasn't sure but there might have been a team dynamic to the WE. Say if an AI is WE of another AI, but you trade with another member of the team, you might still get the WE hit. I'm not sure of that though since I could not determine who the WE.

Yes, definitely. It is in fact impossible to trade a tech, for example, to only one AI in this game unless you kill his team-members first. You are trading it to all three on the team. So tech trades will practically always net you a WE modifier with someone... and that affects the attitude of his whole team towards you. IOW, you almost always hurt relations with 3AI every time you trade a tech... at least after they have all met each other and created rivalries. Before that its reletively safe.

Resource trades (OTOH) only go to a single AI, not the whole team. But resource trade is usually not enough iy itself to give you the WE modifier anyhow.

[lymond]

For Vanilla and Warlords, what I do is click on a Leader's name at the bottom right of the main screen, read what they said to me, and then press the Escape key. Then, I will keep repeating this process until the randomly-selected message is one that talks about who their Worst Enemy is. It doesn't take that long to do and you can even "pre-click" ahead of a laggy interface, so that the trading window will open as soon as your CPU and graphics card "catch up" with your clicking actions.

I'm not sure I follow this exactly. Where does this message appear? I've never seen anything about who an AI's worst enemy is in Vanilla/Warlords. I also have no clue what you mean by the lagging or catch up with clicking actions.

[kcd_swede]

Originally Posted by lymond

I'm not sure I follow this exactly. Where does this message appear? I've never seen anything about who an AI's worst enemy is in Vanilla/Warlords. I also have no clue what you mean by the lagging or catch up with clicking actions.

He means that you open up the diplo dialogue with a leader you think might have worst enemies. Look at how they greet you. If they say "We encourage you to stop trading with our enemy Alexander" "He's not to be trusted" etc... then you know that Alecander is his "worst enemy."

Since the leader will only sometimes tell you who his worst enemy is, you might have to open diplo, close diplo, re-open, re-close, repeat until you get him to tell you. Dhoom is simply saying that if your graphics are lagging, causing the opening and closing of diplomacy to be slow, you can pre-click it to save some time. If you have a computer less than 3 years old, I doubt you experience such a lag, though.

[Dhoomstriker]

Originally Posted by lymond

I'm not sure I follow this exactly. Where does this message appear? I've never seen anything about who an AI's worst enemy is in Vanilla/Warlords. I also have no clue what you mean by the lagging or catch up with clicking actions.

Let's say that you've been playing for a few turns and are about to research a tech. Next turn, you learn the tech and find out that Toku does not know the tech, so you decide that you want to trade the tech away to him. However, you also decide that if Toku is someone's Worst Enemy, then you won't trade him the tech.

In this game, the task is easier than in a normal game, as each member of a team will share the same Worst Enemy as each other.

For example, I decided to talk to Huayna, who will list the same Worst Enemy as will Hannibal and Mehmed II, his two teammates. Therefore, once I find out who Huayna's Worst Enemy is, I won't have to use the same trick to find out who Hannibal and Mehmed II hate--they will share the same Worst Enemy.


As for the message, I am talking about the greeting message that you will get when an AI greets you after you've started up a dialogue with them.

Examples from Huayna in this game include:
1. Welcome, Pyotr I Velikiy, to my home.

2. Good day to you, Pyotr I Velikiy.

3. And what brings Russia to my humble palace?

4. We would encourage you to stop trading with our bitter enemy - Elizabeth/Mansa Musa/Julius Caesar!


Number 4 is the message that you are looking to see. If you don't see that message, then you can click on the "Farewell (exit)" option and you will discontinue the current discussion. If you then click on the Leader's name again, the greeting message will be randomly chosen--sometimes it will be a duplicate of the last time (that happens with random number generation) but after enough tries, the greeting messages will cycle. Just keep trying until you get a message that looks similar to the 4th message that I listed above.

Pressing the Esc (Escape) key is just a shortcut for clicking on the "Farewell (exit)" option.

If you want to be efficient about this approach, simply position your mouse cursor over a Leader's name. Click on their name and DO NOT move your mouse.

After reading the greeting message and finding out that it is not a message that you care about (say, it was just "Good day to you, Pyotr I Velikiy,") then press the Escape key and click again with your mouse immediately.

The faster that you click + press Escape, the faster that the greeting pop-up window will appear and disappear... after a while, you'll get so fast at clicking the mouse and pressing Esc that the interface will appear to lag behind your clicks and keystrokes. The good part is that the interface still seems to recoginze your mouse click even if you click before the greeting pop-up window has disappeared (note that this aspect I think works slightly differently in a different game version--maybe BtS with BUFFY--where clicking too soon DOES NOT work).

For Warlords, this means that you could even click on Huayna's name 10 times in a row without doing anything else, even if the greeting pop-up window is active. Then you can press the Esc key every time that you have read the message and the pop-up window will disappear to be replaced immediately by another one... the only downside is that if you got the message about a Worst Enemy on the first try, then you'll have to dismiss Huayna another 9 times ("what a bothersome guy," you might start to think).


Anyway, in message 4, we saw that Toku and his teammates were NOT Huayna's Worst Enemy. So, in this case, we'd only need to ask one of Mansa / Elizabeth / Julius Caesar to see who their Worst Enemy is. If it is Toku and his team, we can still make the trade with Toku, but we had better expect to accumulate a -4 Traded with our Worst Enemy negative Diplo modifier with each of Mansa, Elizabeth, and Julius Caesar. At least with my trick, you'll be armed with this knowledge.

Sure, BUFFY gives you a little icon to tell you who the Worst Enemy is, but this technique probably took me about 40 times as long to type as it will for you to execute.

[kcd_swede]

^Bah! What a waste of time. Just be sure to hold down the ALT-key when you click on the leader name. Then you will always know exactly who the leader's worst enemy is, with just one click!

[lymond]

Ah...I see now....I remember reading those messages a looooong time ago, but have ignore that screen for some time and...well...obviously BUG makes it easy. Your always full of tricks Dhoom. I still use that .bat file you gave to switch dll files very frequently.

Yes, KCD...that would indeed simplify the matter greatly