Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter LXXVIII:Ragnar!

i_imperator

i_imperator

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Welcome to the 78th edition of the Lonely Hearts Club for BTS. In the Lonely Hearts Club we explore strategies to cope with one of the most dreaded situations in Civ IV ( possibly the main reason for reloads after the military collapse one ): starting in isolation....

Our brave, vulgar and perhaps drunken leader is Ragnar of the Vikings whom we last played in LHC 48!

Spoiler :


Traits Finanical and Aggressive!
Time for some warmongering fun on a water map!!:devil:
Starting Tech's are Hunting and Fishing

Unique Unite:
Spoiler :

The Beserker! A Fearless Maceman that gets the amphibous promotion, its like having marine's for the middle ages, gogogo!

His Unique Building :
Spoiler :

The trading post, is a lighthouse that also gives the navigation I promotion to all the naval units built in the city where it is. This is probably one of the more powerful UB if you are playing in a water map and plan for some warfare...

The Start
Spoiler :


An almost perfect capital for Ragnar as we start with the technologies for both of these resources! :goodjob:
Spoiler :
Just a heads up i used a archipelago map script for this, its too perfect for ragnar!And i have reuploaded a new map after being informed that we were not isolated due to a border pop in the bc's.And i have fixed issues with beginunit and events.


You will find the zipped saves below.Also for Monarch and above please add archery to the barbs, otherwise the ai will be killing kittens and we dont want that :( Choose your level then (more precisely) then choose your speed and get underway. Suggestions for updates are:

Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.

Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.

Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).

Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).

Finally, a thankyou to r_rolo1 and all those that came before him in this series' initial run and to TheMeInTeam for the map creation guides, and to ecuwins for co-hosting this series. Enjoy!

Edit: Fixed the isolation problems, and i have added a deity save for anyone brave and smart enough to attempt that difficulity! Good luck!
 

Attachments

  • LHCRagnar 78.rar
    58.4 KB · Views: 95
If I can fix my crashing anytime i click play scenarios I'll play, otherwise gl to everyone (I need to get round to actually finishing games I'm playing at moment too lol)
 
How is this supposed to work? I've been playing this.... do I just post stuffs? This is my first "write up" so please bear with me :)

... ugh yea sry about the img size. I thought this forum might resize em all.... I guess not. What's the standard size people use? I was going to resize them down but worried that the text might not be readable. :S

Spoiler :


Part 1
------

Well, behold the tale of Ragnar the (probably) drunk! I'm trying to learn how to play Immortal so I picked the Immortal rep. The first few screenies are inconsistent cause I had to restart as I accidentally gave myself Archery instead of the barbs.... ooops. I then got a map in the 2nd play instead of gold from a GH. Sorry bout that.

So, I SIPed I should have 1Ned on reflection, but hey. Went Agri => AH => Wheel. No idea why, was kinda on auto-pilot after playing pangeas. But still was lucky as found hossies.

Built Worker => Warrior => Settler => Worker

Red spots are where I am considering setting at the moment. I will first settle the spot on the left to grab the hossies as I am terrified of barbs above Emperor. Bad experiences playing Deity has me terrified of barbs so I want chariots asap.



After searching the southern peninsula I curse my SIP as it results in ungettable deer. :(.



I decide to abandon the right expansion spot and expand south for my third city instead. North looks a bit rubbish with dry rice and jungle. My expansion plans are marked.



I've since grabbed Mining => BW => Sailing as I want the GLH. Then pottery as I also want Colossus. But then I realise that I have no happies so decide to wander towards monarchy first. I think I should have time.

I get TIN! YAY



While doing this a work boat scouts the islands and I decide to sack the idea of expanding north and settle the islands to the west and the east instead. There is more food and there are some furs on the right. I want to grab them to save me a warrior in each city.



These are the isles of yay:



This is the south of the lands of hoorah. I've will settle these first (furs!) but unfortunately someone else got there first :(



The good news is that there is a source of copper there! :D

and to the right I have found:



which on closer examination has two silvers its a bit rubbish. No food, might settle it later if I'm desperate.

I got GLH btw (I did have a screenie but lost it :( ) and am building Moai in the hossies city. Clam city is my unit pump. Problem is my production mostly sucks in the islands im settling without Metal Casing, caste and guilds. So whipping is pretty much the only answer which kinda makes a nonsense of my Monarchy diversion :(.

The best thing I've noticed is that setting the islands has increased my trade income by 100%. I get 2 gold for each internal trade route across the sea! I never knew that! :)

While looking at my outpost in the land of hoorah Lord McCauly informs me of his opinionated twaddle.



On examination he's kind of right. I have built ZERO culture at this stage so while I have a few cities I don't have much land. There has been enough food in inner rings for me not to really bother with building monuments. When I finally remember that culture helps me island hop I regret not building them earlier though :D

I am absolutely terrified of the other AIs I figure they have 4563566 cities by now. I spot a border and it scares me crapless.



Once MOAI completes the borders pop in hossie city which reveals Bismark



and I check his score.......



and I seem to be ahead on metal casing. Yay!

Its worth noting that I really need Collo. I have only ONE cottage. All my income is water tiles. Here is the one cottage. Everyone lives and buys and makes everything here :D



So I culture walk my galley and scout (that I still have from the start!) into Bismark's territory and find someone else!



He's roughly even on tech with Biz so I start to feel pretty good about myself. Biz is Jewish but not the owner on that religion. Mansa is confu. I don't trade yet cause I haven't checked to see if they are worst enemies of anyone and haven't scouted there lands yet.

Biz goes all WHEOOHRN! I freak out and start building a trireme (I was super lucky with NO barb galleys appearing in my waters). But then I find the target of the red fist!



LOL, chariot. Why is he fighting with his Jewish brethren anyway?

So I scout the rest of the lands and finally bump into:



Who is super backwards. He hates Mansa but Biz and Perry hate each other right now so I bite the bullet and trade with Mansa. This forces me towards the Machinery => Optics line so I can trade.

OH, btw I got this! :)



I grabbed horse riding earlier to remove the barbs on my islands which I slowly did. I also had another culture pop that found me another island between Yay and Hoorah. I'll settle that later.

Couple of amusing points at this stage. One. The amount of workers I have



Two. Mids has not been built yet?!?!?!?!



To be continued.........

 
Part 2 (wouldn't let me put all images in 1 post)

Spoiler :


My main issue is that my entire empire is based on trade routes. These come from Biz's border. To use my UU I need to war soonish but I cant war on Perry cause he's too far away, Mansa is good for tech trading and Biz controls the gate to my trade routes. So I decide to just settle the rest of my lands, grab optics and circumnavigate.

I find Izzy



Shes a little backwards but not too bad, I gift her some tech to get on her good side as in Confu and she's Buddist. Biz has also switched to Confu now too. I also find Augustus Ceasar. He's fighting Napolean, he's pretty backward so I sell him some tech, grab his map and become friends.

I circle the globe! :)



The colonisation of the southern lands is going okay



I am a bit slow though, I could probably have whipped more stuff and done this quicker but my micro is slipping a bit as I relax. I don't really have much a plan for my cities I'm just building harbours, markets. I get into a bit of a tech war with Mansa and he stops offering me "fair" trades. Then my espionage kicks in and freaks me out.



I'm 3 turns behind Mansa on Nationalism. I could lose Taj! So my next specialist pops a golden age and I race towards it.

In the mean time:



:D :D :D. That's pretty late eh?

But so is this! I note no-one has built it yet, so I build it just after I finish Taj (awww).



I chain together another golden age with specialists to make sure I win the Lib race. But to be honest now I'm really not sure how I'm going to win this game.

I checked the diplo scores. Izzy is about the same if not more preferred than I so diplo doesn't look _that_ solid. Most backwards people except Napoleon and Augustus have more or less caught up (they're around Nationalism while I'm around Scientific Method).

Getting anyone to DoW on anyone except Napoleon is going to be tough......
So! I've decided to go and kill Biz (he's the most backward atm) and then attack Mansa to get him to vassal to me afterwards. At the end of this last GA I decided to draft a ton of Berserkers.... (I was avoiding Gunpowder and Astro paths during the GA) does the amphibious upgrade carry over when you upgrade them? I hope so! :D But still, I need fodder to fight anyway.

My biggest concern is my lack of Iron for Frigates but I can send a galleon north and settle a spot quite easily. There are a lot of islands up north I could settle if I wish. I've obsoleted collo but not GLH yet.

I have a Great Scientist (lol I have no Academy yet! :D) a Great Merchant and Two Great Artists due to a bit of unluck in the last GA. I could trigger another GA but I think it would be a bit of a waste as I've been drafting and my pop is a little low now.

I could also attack Izzy as another option or just beeline Sushi as there is a ton of sea food on this map. But to be honest I'm really not sure what the best options is at this point. Any advice?

Map



Techs



Scoreboard



Relations



Finance (1 turn away from GA ending)



Demographics



Also I've found this game to be somewhat easy I usually struggle a bit on Immortal (recently moved up from Emperor). Is that cause Rags is FIN or cause the AI sucks on water maps? I'm pretty sure I picked the Immortal save.

 
@Quibblesome You can use these checkpoints in your game if you want, I prefer using TMIT's style of checkpoints like 25AD>Lib>Victory because i play fast, but just choose whatever suites you.
Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.

Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.

Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).

Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).
And dont worry about the image size! A picture is worth a thousand words afte all :)

Edit @Quibblesome
Spoiler :
if you want you can continue that game, but i have ruploaded the maps/saves due to the face that this was not isolation, might be better off starting again.
 
Spoiler :
TheMeInTeam said:
This isn't an isolated start :lol:.
Click to expand...

Spoiler :
:mad: Are you serious!?!?!?!!? I thought i edited the map so that the ai couldnt reach us. grrrrrrr. Knew this would happen......:(

Im going to remove the saves and upload a new map , im really annoyed right now.
 
Spoiler :
Yeah, AI can settle a city in BCs where it can reach you. More importantly, a 2nd city for the human to the west can easily reach the AI + get trade routes with only 20% culture. I think with much difficulty you can also reach AI to the east, but you can definitely get trade routes with 2 and contact with 3 with a simple, nearby city using borders over a single ocean ;).

I won this using space in the 1930's. Game pissed me off; ai ignoring worst enemies to DoW me late game and really slowing my time.
 
Spoiler :
ok we have a new map and a new start, i used high sea levels this time so that we would be isolated for sure. Sory about the inconvience :(


@TMIT could you put that previous post into a spoiler? I have (hopefully) replaced the saves and map

Edit: Thanks very much :cheers:
 
Hey Imperator - Might I suggest abbreviating the filenames in the future and make them consistent. Something like "LHC 78 Ragnar IMM". It's hard to see which is which in the menus.

edit: oh crap! huts and events are on
 
Checkpoint 1:
Spoiler :

Our opening island is small. Room for another two cities, but I sent my settler on a galley to the northern island for the trade route bonus and so he could share Nidaros's fish tile. Settling in the center of the northern island misses the NE fish, but culture is a low priority for me, so I'm not counting on border pops. I've got islands to settle, trading posts and workboats to build, and a navy to create to deal with barb galleys. I got the copper hooked up before even creating a warrior, so my first garrison unit was an expensive axeman.

Our destiny is the sea, so the plan is to build the GLH and Colossus and use water tiles and trading routes for commerce. Cottages? Bah! Only peasants live in cottages!

Might make this a sushi game. Seraiel makes it look awesome. :lol:

Spoiler :


BTW, has anyone done the maths on whether lighthouse first or granary first is better for a new seafood city?
 
^^^^this....pretty much what I go by. You can always whip the LH after the gran.

Interesting map..

Spoiler :
GLH a must here with tons of coastal cities you can settle early. Lot's of seafood. Got Astro later than expected but all the AIs I've met seem nerfed for IMM. I kind of wondered if something was wrong. However, almost all AIs (i've met all but 1) are isolated as well, so that is a factor. I should win Lib easily as well. AIs are far from Astro even at 900AD and I'm no reaping juicy GLH trade routes
 
lymond said:
Hey Imperator - Might I suggest abbreviating the filenames in the future and make them consistent. Something like "LHC 78 Ragnar IMM". It's hard to see which is which in the menus.

edit: oh crap! huts and events are on
Click to expand...

No problem lymond, will do that in future

Can you not turn off events in custom game? Im not getting into another discussion about huts, LHC Pacal got hijacked because of it, and i got flamed for turning them off then. Believe me i hate huts, they are fake difficulty, but most people who play these dont play at emperor+ so i have to adopt r_rolo's philosophy and leave them on.And im stating this again, i dont want any discussions on huts in this thread, use the discussion fourm for that. Dont mean to sound harsh on this but i have to be.

For the next LHC I will provide both huts and non huts saves in the zip, if anyone is intrested.

As for this map lymond
Spoiler :
You said that TGL is a must wonder and that astro is very important, im wondering if it is possible to go for early astro on this map?Also on the ai's most of them may seem nerfed because i used high sea levels, only one to two ai's has a decent sized landmass.And dont forget we are finanical after all trolololol :)
 
i_imperator said:
Can you not turn off events in custom game?
Click to expand...
No, but it's easy enough for the player to do it themselves when dealing with World Builder saves such as the ones used in this series.

Just a general FYI for anyone interested:

WB saves are simply text files.

  1. Open WB file in Notepad
  2. Fifth line down should read Calendar=CALENDAR_DEFAULT
  3. Now look at the next two lines below that, if you see something like Option=GAMEOPTION_NO_GOODY_HUTS
    Option=GAMEOPTION_NO_EVENTS    ,
    then huts and events are OFF.
  4. Add or remove those lines as preferred. http://i46.tinypic.com/zojbx2.jpg
 
ecuwins said:
No, but it's easy enough for the player to do it themselves when dealing with World Builder saves such as the ones used in this series.

Just a general FYI for anyone interested:

WB saves are simply text files.

  1. Open WB file in Notepad
  2. Fifth line down should read Calendar=CALENDAR_DEFAULT
  3. Now look at the next two lines below that, if you see something like Option=GAMEOPTION_NO_GOODY_HUTS
    Option=GAMEOPTION_NO_EVENTS    ,
    then huts and events are OFF.
  4. Add or remove those lines as preferred. http://i46.tinypic.com/zojbx2.jpg
Click to expand...

Sigh, the joys of mapmaking.....:(

I could try and reupload this again and edit this. I completly forgot about turning off events in the custom game, and i thought that the player would be well able to turn them off in custom game.

Edit: Im going to provide another zip with no huts or events on and with a shorter file name. It will be up later today. Apologies for the inconvience.
 
Checkpoint 1.5: Monarch, huts and events on, epic speed
Spoiler :
I've explored all the islands I can reach by galley, and am expanding hard, mostly to the south where the islands are larger and have more resources. I put a scout in the middle of Spice Island, thinking that would keep barbs from spawning... lolnope! A barb city popped on the south coast while my settler was en route, and so I ended up settling north of it. I'll send a couple of berserkers to take it in about ten to fifteen turns. Civil Service is being researched now.

I used the Oracle for Metal Casting, got the GLH and Colossus, as planned, then popped a low probability Great Engineer. I hadn't been planning on going for the Pyramids, but that seemed a jolly good thing to use an Engineer on, so I did. I'm running Representation and Slavery. No religion exists in the Viking empire.

My new cities are doing the Granary > Trading Post > Courthouse queue. The established ones are spitting out workboats, settlers, archers, and galleys. I'm trying to shuttle archers to some of the islands to keep barbs from spawning on them while waiting for settlers to be ready. Having to make so many workboats is kind of a pain. Shame they aren't more like a "wet worker" that can make fishing boats and then move on to the next spot.

No screenshots due to laziness, but I'll attach a save in case anyone is interested. I know I'm not being nearly as methodical as I could be about the game, but being FIN on a water map with the Colossus and GLH invites laziness. :p
 

Attachments

  • Lonely Ragnar LXXVIII AD-0385.CivBeyondSwordSave
    149.4 KB · Views: 60
Habitus said:
If I can fix my crashing anytime i click play scenarios I'll play, otherwise gl to everyone (I need to get round to actually finishing games I'm playing at moment too lol)
Click to expand...

I had the same issue, I found two possible solutions:
1. Rename the file and remove all spaces, for example Lonely.Hearts.ClubL.XXVIII.Immortal.CivBeyondSwordWBSave

2. Copy the file instead the folder in My Games in the Public Maps folder in the game directory in Beyond the Sword. (Delete/move all files with spaces in the normal scenario folder)
 
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