Same Start Challenge: Pick Your Leader

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wylem

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 25, 2009
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The Same Start Challenge will give you the opportunity to play the same map and starting position as others but with any leader you choose. This style of game should give us plenty to discuss from simply playing the map to leveraging the different leader traits.

Here is the start.
ssstart.jpg


Map Information:
Spoiler :
Pangea, low sea level, pressed shoreline, no huts, no events
AI Civilizations:
Spoiler :
Isabella
Ragnar
Peter
Joao
Huayna Capac
Hammurabi
Please use spoilers when posting updates or discussing the updates posetd by others. No spoilers needed when discussing the opening or what civ you want to use for this start. If posting an update please indicate the leader you have chosen, game speed, difficulty, and years that you are posting about.

For example:

Ramesses, Emperor, Epic, 4000 BC - 1 AD:
Spoiler :
Then include your report, comments, progress, thoughts, screenshots, etc, in a spoiler, detailed as you wish.
Feel free to post as little or as many updates as you would like.

Since we are using WB saves and not standard saves the following was borrowed from the Noble's Club.
The WB-saves for each difficulty are attached (zipped; they are bigger than standard saves). To play, simply download and unzip the save for your leader into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, select "Play Scenario", and look for the SS_ prefixed game you extracted. For example: "SS_IMMORTAL_CHURCHILL".

If you unzip the entire zip file to you WorldBuilder folder you will have all the leader scenarios available.
Spoiler :
01scenario.jpg
Note: In each scenario file you can select your level of difficulty, but that doesn't give the AI the right bonus techs by itself. Use the Noble save for all levels at and below Noble. The Monarch save gives all the AI Archery. Emperor adds Hunting; Immortal adds Agriculture; Deity adds The Wheel.

For players on Monarch or above, you should add archery as a tech for the barbarians (if you don't, the AI will capture their cities very early). This cannot be done in the WB save file and must be done in Worldbuilder as follows:
Spoiler :

  1. Zoom in all the way so you can't see the rest of the map.
  2. Use the CTRL-W key (or the menu) to enter the worldbuilder. Avoid looking at the mini-map in the lower right corner.
  3. By default you're in "player" mode (look in the box in the upper right; the icon that looks like a person should be selected). You'll get a drop down menu labeled with your leader's name. Barbarians are at the bottom, so cover the rest of the list with your hand if you don't want to see who else is on the map. Select "Barbarians".
  4. Select the "Technologies" tab in the box on the left.
  5. Find Archery (the arrow head icon; 8th row, 3rd column from the right) and click it.
  6. Exit the worldbuilder.
  7. Zoom out again after the map fades, and start playing.
Click to expand...
Each zip file contains all of the leaders for the indicated difficulty.

For some reason Mao Zedong is referred to as CHINESE_LEADER in the XML files so he has the same name in the WB saves. Everyone else should be easily recognized.
 

Attachments

Going to give this one a try. Closed my eyes and randomly picked a file and ended up with Roosevelt. Playing on Prince, so feel free to snicker derisively at me.

Map spoilers!

Spoiler :
Marble in the BFC? Very nice indeed.
 
All right, gave the map a quick run-through. These Pangaea maps tend to fly by for me just because it's so easy to chain-vassal and you don't have to worry about things like circumnavigation or loading a bunch of guys onto a Galleon to go find another target.

Randomly picked my leader with the cunning use of arrow keys; ended up with Roosevelt! Playing at Prince difficulty for now. How'd he do?

Spoiler :
Domination, 1645 AD!

This didn't seem like too difficult a map. Part of it might have been that I still play at a forgiving difficulty level, but on the other hand, all three strategic resources were right nearby, and Marble and Stone were within arm's reach. Did some wonder-spam early game (Great Wall, Oracle [for Metal Casting], Pyramids, Hanging Gardens), but I had enough early production and enough food that I was also able to whip together an army of axes and swords. New York (1NW of the bronze just NE of the start) ended up being a production powerhouse.

I stomped Huayna out first. He was teching much, much faster than everybody thanks to a very nice, commerce-heavy start, but it wasn't hard to cut him off from metals. Ragnar declared on me twice during this time and caused a little mischief, but he was run off pretty easily. Teched Feudalism after winning, then went in for a quick war with Hammurabi, taking a couple cities and his capital (Jewish and Hindu holy city, with shrines and Stonehenge!) with little effort and then vassalating him to give myself a buffer against the Vikings. I was in Free Religion at this point thanks to an engineer who built the Shwedagon Paya. Hammy, Ragnar, and Joao went Hindu, while Peter and Izzy went Buddhist. Izzy built the AP, so I spread Buddhism around and managed to get a nice number of votes.

Ragnar declared on Izzy at around 800 AD, so I joined in the fun. I captured a few pretty nice cities, but Ragnar was rolling over her in the west, so I took her capitulation before I could march on Madrid. Libbed MT around this point and started pumping out Cuirassiers for war with Joao, who had a huge number of cities and some ridiculous production but not much in the way of commerce. Tech'd to Steel and Rifling and finally wore him down in a total slog of a war. It helped that I was able to run Golden Ages for a lot of the time thanks to GPs and the Taj in New York. The hardest part was moving the slow Cannon/Mace/Rifle stack over to his land.

Around this time I switched into Theocracy and Buddhism to keep the AP off my back; I didn't know if Izzy was in danger of calling for peace when I went for Peter, so I figured it'd be easier to switch out and control the thing by myself. By this point I had enough Buddhist cities to have my way with the place, and the only one closing in on me in tech was Ragnar, who had Grenadiers by the time I let Joao capitulate. From there, it was a quick and dirty war with Peter (his stack was within easy reach of some healing Cavalry), and he joined the chain of vassals, which put me at a little over 64% land for the win! I'd have won by AP cheese a few turns later if Peter hadn't been enough; I had no desire to go fight Ragnar after the slog that the Portugese War turned into.

Result was my highest score to date, beating the Shaka game that I'd posted.

I think people who pick Industrious leaders are going to have fun on this map. There are some nice production centers right around the capital, and of course having those sexy wonder resources always helps. Roosevelt was a great leader for this type of win since going into uber-war mode on a Pangaea map is easy with an Organized leader. Obviously, I was playing without uniques thanks to America's late start on that end, but they weren't really relevant when I was able to easily turn the empire into an economic powerhouse despite being in war for most of the game.

Strategy-wise, I still think going for Huayna first was the best decision. It'd be easy to axe-rush Hammy, but I don't like doing that against his Bowmen. I have a feeling somebody's going to do it anyway, which will be interesting, but Huayna has a lot of potential to just tech and tech and tech on this map, so I think he's got to go first. I wish I'd gone for Joao afterward, but I really liked Hammy having a double-shrine city, so I was eager to grab that, and then Izzy building the AP forced my hand in that direction.

I probably could've won by Conquest or AP cheese earlier, but Joao had so many nice, well-developed cities and I had such a big tech edge on him that I kept wanting a little bit more of what he had. I easily could've trimmed a hundred years off my time if I'd just settled for what I had and then took the AP cheese win. Still, after the trouble his Jumbos had given me, it felt pretty good laying the smack down. :devil:

Fun map overall! I might give it a try with another leader and see how it plays differently.
 
This time I plan to do a detailed writeup of what I do, since the purpose of this series is cross-comparison. Hell, I might play it twice with totally different strategies each time.

Emperor/Normal, same settings as usual.


Spoiler :
Resigned the game.

Switched religions to avoid DoWs by Ragnar, then got dogpiled by Huayna/Joao. I lost 5 troops at 70+% at a fight near Karakorum. Diplo is such a pain on these stupid Pangaea maps...

Gonna try a different strategy. With BFC Marble and nearby Stone, Horses, and Iron, an SSE--> Cuirs should win us the game.
 
Barbs get Hunting on IMM+

so you can pick a civ that is already one of the AIs?
 
Little update in Monarch Lincoln, wonder if anyone has ever experienced this before:

Spoiler :
Built TOA, Shrined and got my trade routes open to everyone. Seems that ToA means every AI city in the world wants your trade route. This is a screenie is 6 turns after ToA and 5 turns after Kong Miao was built. Does this have some hidden synergy that I've never heard about? Because I just switched someone who didn't found buddhism from it with only open borders and trade routes. Didn't even have to ask them :D. Year of screenie is 325 BC
 

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I'm just testing it out now and trying to pick a map that seems fair to both the human player and the AI.
Click to expand...

:wow:

:thumbsdown:

Spoiler :
Unless you think Joao having 25% world land when the player settles towards him to be "fair". I'm #2 in land and I have around half of his. He took another AI as a peacevassal and is now sitting at 35% on the victory conditions list.....he's never fought a war!


1/7 =/= 25%. Jesus.

That said, this map should be doable regardless, if you're playing down a bit in terms of difficulty, you pick an uberleader, or the AI just behaves differently in someone else's playthrough.

I'm using Sid of the Minors (yes I wb text edited him into the "alex" save), in other words no traits and no starting techs/uniques on immortal. I'll have a summary later, after I finish...
 
lymond said:
Barbs get Hunting on IMM+
Click to expand...

Barbs actually get hunting at emperor.
For immortal they then also get agriculture.

What name does one actually have to use in the text file as leader name to get Sid of the Minors?
 
Played it as Gandhi on Immortal.

Here I am for the moment:

Spoiler :

Delhi:
civ4screenshot0003v.jpg


The land:
civ4screenshot0002js.jpg


civ4screenshot0001s.jpg


Tech situation:
civ4screenshot0004y.jpg


Demo:
civ4screenshot0000q.jpg

 
TheMeInTeam said:
Spoiler :
Unless you think Joao having 25% world land when the player settles towards him to be "fair". I'm #2 in land and I have around half of his. He took another AI as a peacevassal and is now sitting at 35% on the victory conditions list.....he's never fought a war!
Click to expand...

Regarding the guy in question!
Spoiler :
Yeah, he was a beast in my game as well. The Joao AI for whatever reason seems to be prone to ridiculous REXing, and he had a bit of room for it on this map. I think this could be mitigated by subbing out Joao with someone non-Imperialistic.
 
Spoiler :
Ugh this game is about as horrible as MS Charlemagne.

Tried another route this time, Keshik Rushing Joao and murdering him, then murdering Hammurabi, who doesn't have any metals. Got 13 cities, 35% land, cottaged spam and was first to Liberalism in 1230 AD.

It didn't work. Huayna switched from Buddhism to Taoism, then decided to hate me and DoW me through a Defensive Pact with Isabella even though my army was about as strong as his. Ragnar and Peter jumped in. I resigned, there was no way I could win a 1v3 war while trying to maintain tech parity.

I dunno, from what TMIT says, Joao is a monster on this map, so I don't know what to do. Can we beat him with Cuirs?


This might be a good map for an SSE strategy with Isabella. The tech rate of the game is pretty rapid, but that's because of Huayna and Isabella. If they die, the techrate crumbles. Ragnar and Hammurabi will horribly backwards. I might be able to get 4 vassals with Conqs alone...
 
Sid, Immortal/Normal

To get sid, I switched LEADER_ALEXANDER (first save I saw) with LEADER_BARBARIAN. I wiped all traits. I made the civ MINOR (no uniques). This allows a baseline game w/o any starting tech, traits, unique unit/building or benefits at all. Well, except of course that we aren't the AI ;).

1655 Conquest (waited a few turns so I could simultaneously trip dom + conquest and kill an annoying AI completely :lol:)

Spoiler :


Settled in place. W/o starting techs we pick up AG ----> AH, then to archery (anti barb) then we make sure to get BW, pottery, writing while expanding.

Diplo was VERY tense in this game. Lots of religion founded all over the place, and running any 1 would make me targeted on multiple fronts. What I did was throw down ~3 archers/border city and run no state religion. This slowed tech but I was surprised to find that it wasn't that hard an investment. In a central location I had like 5+ axes too. Those axes would eventually become rifles because I had money lying around for it come rifling draft time.

I did cookie cutter aesthetics line for great library (late, finished in AD but knew nobody else would get it because I knew everyone <3).

The military carrying cost and complete lack of AI gold to siphon for my own tech purposes slowed down my lib time significantly. I've been hitting nat ---> lib at around 600-700 AD lately, so this was a step back in raw rate although I'll take survival any day. I still got it though:

pyllibnat.png


And picked up taj mahal to boot. Now, recall that I was complaining earlier about the map, and specifically how the map feeds Joao land. Look at this picture!

junkassertion.png


Some "fair" start. Opening up the screen after the game, you can see that all civs started on coast or very close to it...except joao who can use 3 or so cities to effectively block land. And as he's a top REX AI, he did it. Up to 25% land, just 3% shy of double the average value! This garbage was of course not ideal. Also not ideal was HC PEACEVASSAL to Joao...

My original plan was to simply stomp on somewhat backwards izzy/ragnar/ham and use that to compete with our portuguese friend. However, I had a better idea as the rifles started to be drafted en masse': Joao lacked gunpowder, RP, and rifling along with everyone else. He picked gunpowder by the time I had around 40 rifles. I told myself "screw it, there's no time like now while I have the tech lead", and DoW.

He insta-bribed ragnar on me, an exercise in futility since izzy/ham hated ragnar and wouldn't open borders with him right away. I had HC to deal with also. Wait, what? No HC stack at all? I was expecting a little bit, but nothing. Peter WAS plotting war when I declared, but dropped his plans a few turns into the war. I promptly handed him lib for an ally...or just someone to trigger vassal rules.

Joao sent a token force at me but I had 2 stacks of 20 rifles running rampant through his lands. All he managed to do was slow down one of them 3 turns while the super medic healed it, while yet another stack formed and took a 3rd route. I managed to take 5 cities in the space of 10-15 turns (most of it only to deal with his initial stack), and he capitulated. This was the start of a chain of course. Peter was next, and capped after I took a city. HC too.

Over on the other side of the world, ragnar finally haggled open borders and had cannons, but not rifles. He got roasted alive by draft rifles and took peace. Izzy had capped hammurabi, but a triple rifle split stack invasion (20+ each stack) capped her in ~5-6 turns anyway. Hammurabi hadn't even broken free! He did on her cap though, and I added him instantly.

Finally I DoW on douche bag Ragnar, who of course gets rifling like 2 turns after that, so my forces couldn't heal + reach him in time. Partially out of anger, partially out of wanting double victory conditions, and partially "because I could" and that it was ragnar, I opted to wipe his sorry butt off the map anyway. That decision cost me about 5 turns. Those were well spent <3.

1655conquest.png


Still, this game is precarious turf with superjoao. If players don't find a way to deal with him before he runs away the map might take a while/get rough. Fortunately for me, my suicide mass rifle draft (starting 1200's AD) was enough to completely shred him and I never looked back.



It was fun. This is a great series idea and I will play in every single map hosted. Please don't position AIs to turn into supercomps though, unless the deliberate goal is to add challenge because you think the map is too easy. You might have done that, but I was under the assumption that map was designed to be fair to AI and players based on what was said, so I don't think so ;).

Draft is as nasty as ever. I used nothing but rifles offensively the entire game. I lost like 90...probably 60 of which were just thrown away on my last target who had rifles :rolleyes:.
 
Played to 325 AD or so...

Using Churchill on Immortal. I'll post an update after I get some rest.

@TMIT on map / AI / and a bit of my game
Spoiler :
The two AI that concerned me were Joao and Isabella. I figured Ragnar might give her a hard time and I thought that HC and Peter would expand enough to keep Joao to the crappy desert east of his cap.

In my game Joao currently has 10 cities and I think I have 8. No peace vassals and Ragnar went after Joao which has helped. Alot of AI tension has slowed things down. HC only expanded to 6 cities and let Joao expand pretty far to the north. Peter was slow getting more than 3 cities so I think Joao forced him into the desert because Peter now has 10 cities but a crappy score (I haven't seen his land yet but I know about the desert from WB).

I read a bit of your spoiler and my plan will be rifles if I can make it. I am pretty crappy mid to late game so I hope I can get better by sticking with this one.

I guess I overlooked the AI positioning when it is someone like Joao. I was just happy to have a strong cap and surrounding area for expansion. I figured that would be enough. Maybe the map generator didn't like me but it seemed to take forever to find something decent so I went with this one (and no modifications to anything beyond setting up same starts for everyone).

I used the bug mod and zoomed way out showing military unit bubbles. Then I tried to make sure there was decent room around the civs in WB. Netx time I pay more attention who is on the map as well.



so you can pick a civ that is already one of the AIs?
Click to expand...

Yes :)
 
Isabella, Emperor/Normal, Domination Victory 1660 AD.


Conquistadors are OP and Police State is great.

Spoiler :

I know I promised a formal writeup, but to be honest I got angry at losing twice with the Mongols, and just wanted to beat this game and be done with it. However, I will detail the highlights of the game, and post pictures shortly.

Strategies Used:
Super-specialist Economy ("wonderspamming)
Temple of Artemis (gave up a chance at Oracle for this, and the GPP this thing provided won me the game)
Support Wonder City (built Great Wall and Parthenon so capital could focus on other things)
Mausoleum of Mausollos Abuse: Triple Golden Age (Artist/Artist+Spy/Taj Mahal)
2-pop whip Conqs with Police State/Forge

In one of the game's funniest moments, I defied a resolution to stay at war with Huayna. I just whipped away all the unhappy citizens.:)


Spoiler :
Old:
I have 22 cities, a huge tech lead, 3 vassals, and the 2 remaining AI's at pleased. I have the largest army by far, and am going to be first to Rifling despite having basically turned off tech for at least 30 turns. I plan to do my best to destroy Joao and Peter, and make them beg for mercy.


This is a fun series, and it will be interesting to see what everyone else plays. I hope to write a better report next time, I was just too angry to do it this game.
 
SSC #1: SuperJoao? Well, here's my Lincoln Monarch Domination debrief (circa 1832 AD)

Spoiler :
After the strange, possibly flukish or perhaps Temple of Artemis inspired spread of Confucianism (I ended up at 30% with only trade routes+Shrine in the BCs, which wasn't bad). This kept diplo very loose and I wonderspammed until I took steel with liberalism. (Strange note: Built The Hanging Gardens at 1140 AD, don't know how that stayed around so long). Looking back I should have taken Military tradition, but delaying the stomp was fine as it became apparent that I needed rifling as my first stack of muskets and cannons were slaughtered outside of Lisbon by a horde of knights.

I decided to take all of Joao's and Peter's cities as my religious investments had me at 100% for most of the game. Ended up having to capitulate BFF Gilgamesh to get domination, but by the end it was simply throwing infantry at cities without siege support and watching the muskets and longbows fall.

Lesson for next game: Speed kills faster. Also probably going to bump it up to Emperor, as self teching the entire engineering tree for a steel-liberalism bulb because of unbuilt wonders was a little annoying.


Anyone have any answer about ToA boosting my religion spread? Is it just because any AI capital that can trade with it through open borders is guaranteed to by the wonder?
 

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Anyone have any answer about ToA boosting my religion spread? Is it just because any AI capital that can trade with it through open borders is guaranteed to by the wonder?
Click to expand...

I think the game optimizes trade routes based on their value. ToA doubles trade route value (additively) in the city it's built. So it creates really high value routes.

But trade routes work both ways, and AIs also get these high value routes. So religions spread through them.
 
What a lovely christmas present! :)

I'll enjoy playing Cyrus on this one I think.
Starting techs agriculture/hunting makes AH cheap to research, and those plain cows are nice in combo with wet corn.

The UU is dandy, and the traits open up doors for both a early war, and a early buildup of a super-capital.
 
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