Buzzdowan's let's play series

Hi,

I really like watching let's play videos. They are fun and educational. During this weekend I decided to record one of my own.

My LP is a slightly modified game. Using a set of rules for a human player, while AIs play a regular game.

You can check my first recording here I hope you'l have fun watching it as much as I had fun creating it. Comments are appreciated!

Enjoy!

Welcome to the forums and thanks for posting this.

Keep the ****oo clock!

Looks like an interesting variant, buzzdowan. Probably a bit tougher with India. India can have many cities in the mid to late game. With each city with more than 6 citizens the discount on unhappiness is outweighing the unhappiness from the city. India's pain is in the early game. Rapid expansion from the start isn't possible.
Your variant has you selling each town you conquer you're more reliant on self-settled cities, so I think India gives you an extra handicap.

Start position looks good, though. I would rather be India than England on this map.

Barbs are giving you a lot of bother. What I would do is if I would move an exploring unit is not click on the map two tiles away immediately. After moving one tile first you can already see more tiles, possibly barbs, and react to this information. Maybe you want to shoot, or move to a better defense tile.

With citizens working tiles in a city you can often set the city on production (or sometimes gold) and lock your citizens on the foody tiles. The reason for this is what happens upon growth: First the food gets calculated, then a new citizen gets born, then production and gold gets added.
So if the new citizen gets put on a hill with no food, no food is lost because the food already got added before that citizen got born. Then after that you'll probably want to move him to a better tile.
Well, that's micro management. not everybody wants to do that...

What I like is that you turned the game's music off, so we can better hear what you're saying!
And it's going at a nice speed. There are already Let's Play hosts that'll spend an hour explaining the civ, so it's good you're doing something different and concentrate on play more.

I watched and will say that I thought you did a great job on your first LP commentary. Very easy to hear an follow.

Shouted a couple times at the screen as you moved that 'scarcher' around, but all in all I will enjoy following your game.

Well done!

Hi Optional,

Interesting thought on starting with India. I was surprised how much unhappiness i am getting from the very start. I am definitely not used to that. It will get better as my cities grow, I guess.

I should be more careful when exploring uncharted territory, so far I was extremely lucky for not loosing a scout - twice I think.

I guess, I will get better as I continue and practice more and of course your comments might help as well, so do bear with me and leave more advices if you see fit.

Hi Aoxomoxoa,



Here is a proof that civ5 can be a horror movie as well. Thank you!

Part 2 is up!

Enjoy!

It probably would have been a good idea to grab Landed Elite before starting down the Honor tree. Once you fix your happiness issues (you forgot about hooking up your pearls, which would help) your cities would explode with LE plus working good food tiles. You need more citizens to work all of those improved tiles. Then your cities will really become productive.

Washington seems to be the big threat. I would go after him first once you get LS and some trebs/crossbows. England will be a real pain since they have the Great Wall and soon will have longbows, which will chew you up while making that slow march toward their cities. Better to wait until artillery and just leave them as a trading partner for now. That way you also don't have to worry about Washington attacking you as you are fighting England.

No ****oo clock?

RedRover57 said:

Once you fix your happiness issues (you forgot about hooking up your pearls, which would help)...

Click to expand...

Yes, I think that was an oversight. At turn 64 you're opening up the tech screen and are pondering between Archery and Construction. Sailing should have been a consideration. Buying the workboat, I suppose, as Mumbai was already busy with a library.

Mumbai was earlier working on a worker, by the way. It could be worthwhile to try and preserve those invested hammers. Hammers invested in a unit stay intact for 10 turns, then they slowly get lost. But they are preserved if once in ten turns you put some hammers in it again. It looked like Mumbai was already halfway the worker, so that might still be worth doing if you haven't played any further then what this video is showing. You'll need another worker at some stage anyway.
For buildings the hammers stay intact for 50 turns, so for buildings it's even easier to preserve the hammers.

I found it hard to bear seeing that worker in Delhi spent so long in hiding, while it could have been hacking away on some stones! The barb camp was behind forest, there was no risk for the worker.

Brussels has an interesting strategic position, there at the crossroads between you and both America and England. I normally avoid spending money on hostile City States, but here I would probably at least try to keep some money at hand to buy them on my side for when situations start to heat up. Especially when you're weaker, having a CS ally between you and your enemy can be great. Of course if you're stronger you don't need to care.

I think you can sell some of your iron. I know you will want to build up for war, but if your plan is to first build the National College in Delhi you won't be building military for a while anyway. Building the NC + some archers and warriors for upgrade will easily take you the time of the trade deal, and other towns are still to small to build much military.
And if you sell them to Washington and he declares - which is something you need to be counting on - his swords will suffer a 50% strength penalty if they're built from your iron, so that's not a reason not to sell iron to him.

I have a request, if I may: Could you post the 4000BC save of this game, assuming you still have it? It looks like a great start for putting in mostly coastal towns, I'd like to try it that way, just playing my own game.
Maybe other lurkers will appreciate the 4000BC save as well.

Thanks for posting this, I'll keep following!

Hi Optional,

Thank you for the advice. I must admit that it is much harder to play the game as a "Lets play" performer. I can not pay enough attention to details and I get sloppy. I hope I will get better as I go.

As per saved game, the earliest save I have is at turn 53 (where part 1 ends). Would this suit you anyhow?

Yes, I think it will be difficult to both keep the game flowing at a nice pace, give some meaningful comment about what you're doing, and at the same time think things over thoroughly. Multitask nightmare. Unless you're extremely experienced and can play the game blindfolded.

I can assure you it's much, much easier to just watch the videos and give commentary!

That's bad luck about the starting save not being there anymore. I would have wanted to start from the start, putting Delhi already coastal and take it from there, so a save of turn 53 is no good then, never mind.

Optional said:

I have a request, if I may: Could you post the 4000BC save of this game, assuming you still have it? It looks like a great start for putting in mostly coastal towns, I'd like to try it that way, just playing my own game.
Maybe other lurkers will appreciate the 4000BC save as well.

Thanks for posting this, I'll keep following!

Click to expand...

I agree, this looks like a great start & would be a fun game to play. There might be a turn 1 save in your auto-save file? Is the city selling restriction self-imposed or are you using a mod?

Hi NotSure!

You are right. There is a 1st turn autosaved game. I did not know the game is autosaving initial state. Nice to know

For all of you who requested it, initial save is attached to this message. Have fun!

BTW: City selling is my own restriction. No modding there.

Excellent, thank you sir! Gandhi is actually pretty fun for conquest games. Just saw your third video... It's going to be hard to part with some of Washington's cities.

NotSure said:

Just saw your third video... It's going to be hard to part with some of Washington's cities.

Click to expand...

Especially one of them... Fountain of Youth anyone?

Thanks for uploading the 4000BC save. Now I have a good excuse to purchase some more DLC!

It might be good to check on Elizabeth every now and then to see what she is willing to give for peace. Especially surrounding an AI town with a big military can get you nice peace deals.
About your variant... if you were to conquer Hastings, would you need to sell it to Washington or could to trade it straight back to England as part of a peace deal?

To get a trireme out and meet others would be nice for improving your trade options. I hope you'll find some!

Part 04 is up!

See what happened to Hastings and most importantly ****oo clock is back

Enjoy!

Thanks for part 4!

I don't think that's too bad, what Washington offered for Hastings. It's a small city, a bit out of their way, I hadn't expected a bigger sum.

But now you have Open Borders with America, why not send a cheap unit out that way for exploration? I think you have intended the trireme for exploration, but that one will take quite long to get around the continent.
Also I'm curious what there is south east of Mumbai. We could see an atoll, there's probably more there, maybe just a little island, but since your trireme was passing it would have been worth a small shot south to find out.

Probably it's just the three of you here on this continent, if there was another civ you would have likely seen a scout.

Hello Optional,

Just finished part 5. Good thinking there, I actually discovered something south east of Mumbai. You'll see, the video is just uploading.

Do you know is it possible to upload to YouTube alternative soundtracks, the same way as you can upload different subtitles?

If this can be done, I would invite others to comment (pardon criticize my play and publish that as an alternative soundtrack that you can select while watching the video.

Just watched video 4. Maybe Elizabeth will give you the bulk of her cash in a peace treaty if you kill off most of her current units and then feign attacking London by lining up your LS on the border (need to do this before she gets longbows). This is probably your best option because I'm not sure if it will even be possible to take London with LS if it gets into the mid-20's strength plus defended by longbows and the Great Wall. The problem is that a melee unit could be hit 5 times (3 times by a garrisoned longbow and twice by the city) before it even got to the city. You will end up sacrificing quite a few troops just to surround her so you will need many extra LS, backed up by trebs and crossbows at the least. If you get a good peace treaty you could wait until rifles/cannons (but that still may be tough, so waiting until artillery is your best bet).

The only thing worse than fighting against England and longbows with the Great Wall is fighting against China and Cho-Ko-Nus with the Great Wall. Either will shred your army before they can reach the city.

RedRover57 said:

The problem is that a melee unit could be hit 5 times (3 times by a garrisoned longbow and twice by the city) before it even got to the city.

Click to expand...

Add a trireme or Ship of the Line and we get to 7 shots!

Would frigates perhaps be an answer? 60 XP needed with those to get extra range = safe from most counter attacks.