No-Cottage Gandhi (Immortal Espionage Economy)

This game will use all the lessons I've learned recently:

• Failgold (or building wealth) to support my economy.
• Espionage, particularly for no tech trades games.
• Building some damn military. (Amazing how you can forget that on an isolated start).

If it goes well, I'll try Deity next. (So wish me luck).

Settings:

• Fractal, all defaults
• Immortal, marathon
• No tech trades, barbs, huts or events
• Aggressive AI
• All victories enabled

Detailed settings:


Since it's No Tech Trades, I'm aiming for an Espionage Economy. Specifically, I plan on having 3 types of cities:

• Production: Forge, barracks and it's good to go. Makes units and wealth / failgold. Depending on trade routes, these may get espionage multipliers (plus some early libraries).
• Spy / Science: My main economic cities. They'll run as many spies as possible, and scientists past that. Multipliers for production, espionage and science. They'll also work grassland hills to build wealth (since you get 6 hammers for the same food as 1 specialist).
• Straight Science: One Oxford city, running as many scientists as possible.

Why no commerce city? Well, in the past few games, the commerce city isn't really online until around Liberalism. By that time, I'll be running Nationalism (and a ton of jails). Without Bureaucracy / Free Speech to pump up cottages, they're just not worth it.

(If my first city is good for commerce, I'd consider it, though probably a faster expansion matters more).

With no commerce city, I have the option to use the slider for happiness (culture), and run Mercantilism late game. Not a definite plan, but a neat option to keep in mind.

With all that focus on specialists, I pick Gandhi, for Philosophical and Spiritual (my favorite trait).

Starting position:


And here's the initial save (Note: I use MacBuffy mod)

The Great Wall, Protecting 1 City (Turns 1-105, Years 4000-2450 BC)

Where to settle?


To the North are 3 bare squares. Those could have resources, but it's not as likely as one bare square surrounded by forest. And to the South, I know I'll have stone, for a great production square. With only 2 hills (one with gold) and a ton of food, I could use another good production square. So 1S it is.


I go worker, and research Agriculture.

Warrior starts exploring. Darius is right on top of me:


Also, Mao says hi on turn 12. He's pretty close too.

Agriculture finishes, and I start Masonry for the Great Wall (with stone). The worker irrigates the corn, then a floodplains.


After Masonry comes The Wheel. I think about stopping the worker on the farm and going straight for the quarry (and the Great Wall with it), but it won't be useful until I get Wheel, which gives the worker time to finish the farm.

At size 3, Delhi makes a second worker.


Why not start on the Great Wall now? The worker will get me stone faster, plus I'm getting TGW so fast already, I don't need to start it without the resource.

Apparently, this Fractal map thinks it's a Pangea. Augustus, Sitting Bull, Mao, Rangar, Wang Kon, and Darius are all on the island.


After the 2 farms, the worker quarries the stone. The 2nd worker helps, then they both make a road to Delhi.


Delhi makes a 3rd warrior, so the other 2 can explore.


Stone comes in as Delhi grows to size 4. Great Wall in 28.


I had been putting EPs into Wang Kon, because he's a good trading partner (I think). But then I remember: No Tech Trades. Duh. So I spy on Darius. He's right on top of me, and I may want to use a spy to remove his capital's defense.


Both workers mine the gold, and Delhi swaps to it. Great Wall in 15.


Success!


I slowed my expansion a bit, but Great Wall with stone costs less than one settler. Much less impact than building Pyramids, and I'll get a Great Spy in 75 turns. We'll see if it's worth it (and if it's so worth it that you'd build GW without stone).

Next build: Stonehenge. Wonder whoring for the win!


With my first main goal accomplished, that's the end of this turnset. I'll post screencaps of the surrounding area and plan my dotmap next session.

Goals for next turnset:

• Get some damn cities. That's all.

Having gold in capital BFC and not working it ASAP should be considered as serious crime.

GKey said:

Having gold in capital BFC and not working it ASAP should be considered as serious crime.

Click to expand...

I thought about it when I farmed the floodplains. I only had the worker turns to do one or the other, not both (without delaying stone). Working corn + gold gives +4 food. Corn + farmed FP = +8 food. That's double the growth. It got me to size 3 faster, which got me a second worker faster, which got me stone faster, and that plus the extra growth got me the Great Wall much faster. For the immediate future, my limiting factor is production (to make settlers) not techs.

My general rule is to grow to size quickly, and only then work zero-food squares like gold once I'm done with growth for the moment. While making the Great Wall, I worked the gold for production (along with stone and the forest hills), and I'll work it once the city grows again in 3 turns. (The +1 food from stone gives 1 turn faster growth, I think).

Other opinions? Deity players, what would you do?

Low Content and all, but:

how

how

how

can you

bear
the



slowness



of




marathon

I play epic roughly 50% of the time and I still can't bring myself to play a marathon game. I try to every now and then so I can enjoy a couple of extra eras of war but I can't get past the fist 50 turns.

I agree with delaying the gold but now that you have it mined you should be working it always. 1 turn faster growth is not worth 3-4 turns or w/e of not working gold.

He is making himself so much work and his detailed playthroughs are very well done, but...
hardly anyone will follow cos it is Marathon, why are you punishing yourself Rhino?

I'll follow it to learn more about No Tech Trading Espionage Economy. Good luck...

Mylene said:

He is making himself so much work and his detailed playthroughs are very well done, but...
hardly anyone will follow cos it is Marathon, why are you punishing yourself Rhino?

Click to expand...

Furthermore, few if any will play along which is part of the fun, and no barbs is also prohibitive for me. I see no reason to turn them off. Anyway, this would be interesting to follow but, as said, following Marathon games are quite uninteresting as well as playing them.

Wait - I thought you could steal techs in No Tech Trades setting (it's been a long time since I've played NTT, so maybe my memory is wrong).
If you can steal techs, that would make it espionage even more valuable in NTT than in regular, as it's the only way to make use of the AI's beakers.

Given this is Marathon/Standard size, a worker-steal first is probably the order of the day. Given the situation now, yes, build settlers non-stop.

Marathon is awesome.

Keilah said:

Low Content and all, but:

how

how

how

can you

bear
the



slowness



of




marathon

Click to expand...

Howdoyoubearthesuperfastspeedofnormal?????

ok I am not expert on marathon, but no barbs made this a little more bearable.

Yeah I shadowed up to 10 BC. i decided to go with cottages so you have comparision, because the capital in SIP is classic bureau (first was thinking about moving for the stone, but decided that I won't hunt wonders).

I cottaged even a bit more then just capital, but that is thanks to the land being it the way it is.

I would be more content if some particular AI (that is super strong teching) wouldn't steal very good spot I had planned south of my city 2 :-(, but well such is life, was too slow (like 10 turns or something).

Ah made classic mistake...went for Alphabet right after writing getting it around 1200 BC... something I almost never do! that surely costed me some.

Got myself something like 10 cities and if it wasn't for that particular steal could be 11...aaah that one will surely made me long time angry!

As for further strategy


Dunno if I will play this out... ticked already ~350 turns...it's almost 1 completed game by me...

edit:
and now I can go back and read the report :-D

just for some comparision sake...

I thought (with the darius being so close and gold in BFC) that it actually means I shoud get city 2 out asap (and no barbs).

So after worker I started on settler, after corn improved I switched to warrior grew to size 2 and the continued with settler and finished him at size 2, meaning I got city 2 out by 2680 BC.

3rd city I put 2000 BC.
City 4 was up 1640BC, city 5 1590 BC.
This 5 cities made nice block against Mao and darius.

I got this way a lot of backfill cities. As I said if I got city 4 south from city 2 I would be much more happier panda and I think I would aim with 6th city sooner then with the spot being taken (after the block there wasn't reason to hurry cities).

Totally forgot espionage since i don't use it much, what is worse I didn't even put EP's on 1 AI, but left it spread... Stealing some things from Darius surely isn't bad option though.

MarigoldRan said:

Howdoyoubearthesuperfastspeedofnormal?????

Click to expand...

LOL. Glad someone likes marathon.

I hope you guys enjoy the game. If there's anything I can do to help you adjust from marathon to your normal game speed, let me know. (Like posting which years the turnset covers, anything like that).

I always play marathon. Just the speed I like. Something about being able to use units for longer, punishing / being punished for falling behind techs, plus I really enjoy the time between turnsets, figuring out what's next.

With no barbs, I just don't enjoy the micro that barbs causes (which might have to do with marathon speed). But maybe I'll try one normal / barbs game next for folks to shadow, see how I'm feeling at the end.

By the way, I intentionally don't worker steal. The AI won't declare on you until 2000 (Is it 1000? Some time after the initial expansion phase), they aren't programmed to protect their early worker, so I afford them the same courtesy.

@coanda Yes, you can tech steal in no tech trades. Espionage is more or less the default economy on that setting.

@vranasm Woo a shadow game. Splendid! I'm a bit behind you, so I'm not reading your posts just yet. Will reply soon.

OneLeggedRhino said:

By the way, I intentionally don't worker steal. The AI won't declare on you until 2000 (Is it 1000? Some time after the initial expansion phase), they aren't programmed to protect their early worker, so I afford them the same courtesy.

Click to expand...

The first thing the AI checks when thinking about picking a war victim is whether they can build enough offensive units. Specifically, they must be able to build at least two different types of "attacking" units in the capital (warriors and archers don't count, but just about every unit after that does). That generally takes at least 15 turns, which is 600 years. Then it'll probably take them 10 turns just to march an army to your borders (another 400 years), giving you a fairly safe 1000 year window before the AI might attack even if they go straight to Hunting + BW, have copper on a river in the BFC, hook it up immediately, and immediately roll a successful war check (~4% chance per turn at most).

I enjoy marathon and no barbs

Sorry if the elitist majority dont like it, but not everyone else enjoys playing by whatever you define to be the normal standards for a game of Civ IV.

Catching Up in Cities (Turns 105-200, Years 2450-1500 BC)

The gold-proponents were right. I start the turnset by swapping from stone to gold, since either stone or gold will make Delhi grow in 3 turns.


Bronze working finishes, and I have copper in Delhi. Nice. It will be a great production city.


With 6 good tiles now, I grow Delhi one more size before the settler. I used to worry about waiting to grab land, but unless you're flanked by protective AIs, you can just expand through someone. (That's Darius this game, probably).

The surrounding area:



And the big-picture map:


And my planned dotmap.



My neighbors are Darius (very close) and Mao (reasonable distance). Mao is Protective and farther away, so Darius is my first target for elimination. I'll settle toward the Mao, sealing off the NW of the continent, and let Darius grab the land between us, then conquer D when it's time to expand. Sometimes, it's a bad idea to let AIs get cities set up, since you can't take them until Construction. But running espionage, I can knock down city defenses at Alphabet.

So, my first city will be the NE cows city. I move it 1NW, to get cow and corn in the center ring, and settle on the plains hill for +1 hammer.


2350 BC: Wang Kon completes Stonehenge, getting me 126 G. That will carry me through the next few techs as I expand.


As expected, Darius grabs the land to my SE.


2300 BC, I start my first settler. Yeah, that's late, but with 6 good tiles, I have great production and research, so I should catch up pretty well.


One worker chops, the other roads to the next city.

2260 BC: Animal Husbandry completes. No horses anywhere near me, but I'm the only one with Copper. I expect we'll see a lot of iron.


I'd done the same check when I got copper, just forgot the screencap. I'd thought about axe-rushing Darius, but there are so many good city spots to grab, I'd rather take them before Mao does. I can conquer through Darius more easily than Protective, spy-loving Mao.

Next tech: Iron Working.


Huh? I know, unusual. Noobish, even. Here's why: There's a great city with rice and 2 gems that seals off the NW backfill area from Mao, but all those resources are under jungles. So IW is the next worker tech. And with NTT, I'll need to research it myself eventually, anyway.

Here's a screencap of the backfill I'm talking about, taken after founding the city:


2180 BC: Cow (City #2) founded. (Remember, the above screencap is later in the game).


Delhi builds 2 more workers, then a settler. One worker stays behind to chop him out, and the other improves the cow. When worker #3 comes out, he finishes the road.

Darius takes another city between us. Still not worried, I have plenty of land to fill first.


1940 BC: Gems (City #3) is ready to found. That's why I needed Iron Working.


The road to Gems will complete next turn. So I have the settler pause one turn, so that the road is ready and the commerce starts flowing right away. Iron Working won't be ready for another 5 turns anyway.

Also, at this point, I have 4 workers, and Cow has improved cows, corn, and a mine on the way.

Next turn, Gems is founded, and builds Pyramids for failgold. 3 workers attack the gems tile, and it's ready in 8 turns.


1890 BC: Iron Working comes in. As expected, lots of iron.


I have one in Cow. Excellent.


The worker had been building a farm, so he's right there to start a mine.

Next techs: Fishing, Pottery, Writing.


This tech path maximizes beaker value (20% bonus for each pre-req you have). I have one good city with a fush, due West of Delhi, so I'll need all of those techs soon. And, between the GPP for Great Spies and all the resource-based commerce, I'm fine without libraries for a bit.

Continued...

If you're anything like me, you only read books with at least 50% pictures. I've used all my screenshots for this post. This turnset is continued below.

Nice, although the screenshots are downloading at an incredibly slow rate.