Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter LXXXI: Pericles

Welcome to the 81st 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 next leader is Pericles of the Greek Empire.

Traits: Philosophical & Creative
Double GPPs & half price libraries. Gotta like that synergy.

Techs: Fishing & Hunting
Fishing isn't that bad when there is a lot of seafood around. I doubt there will be much use for hunting.

Unique Building
The Odeon
A Colosseum replacement with a laundry list of meh buffs. +3 culture, +2 happy faces(as opposed to just +1), can turn 2 citizens into artist, and +1 happy from Hit Singles.

Mr Pericles does get this building at half price, maybe it's good if one were inclined to go for a culture win.

Unique Unit
Phalanx
An Axeman who negates the 100% Chariot attack bonus.

If you are running into Chariots on this map, then something is wrong.

The Start


For those who are new to total isolation, you may want to take a peek at r_rolo1's guide, You, Yourself and your shadow : Some lessons on isolated starts. Also, the LHC Bullpen.

You will find the zipped saves below. Choose your level then choose your level (more precisely) then choose your speed and get underway. For Monarch+, don't forget to add Archery to the barbs. No huts & no events are selected.

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 thank you 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 everyone else who co-hosted this series. Enjoy!

Hmm start looks very good for LHC. SiP is pretty obvious. Build a worker, and tech Agri.

Started playing, encountered chariots immediately.

SIP is great here. Good leader for a LHC, I think.

Immortal....... 325 BC

No major spoilers (I name a luxury I settle by but don't give up the location) and no screen shots for now.

I am stuck and could really use some advice on how to proceed.

Edit: I am playing Emperor, Normal, No Huts, No Events.

Start to 150 BC:


To 1160 AD. Music and meeting and greeting the friendly neighbours:


To 1500 AD. (Astro, ill advised war and Liberalism)



Suggestions welcome and appreciated. Thank you for reading.

I tried this as an OCC. I don't advise it.



Thanks for the map!

@Smilingrogue

UnforcedError said:

@Smilingrogue

Spoiler :

Why do you want to go for diplo in this game? Even if they hate others more than you it still takes a +8 (with hidden modifiers) from an AI to vote for you. What exactly was the reason for the war going badly against Ragnar?

Click to expand...

The Oz-Man said:

I tried this as an OCC. I don't advise it.

Spoiler :

If I hadn't randomly gotten aluminum from a mined hill, I probably would've lost. But I was able to point everyone else away from me and toward Sitting Bull, Monty, and Pacal, so it wasn't too bad. Ragnar DOW'd me on the last turn of the game. He did not in fact manage to take my city.

Thanks for the map!

Click to expand...

Did you select OCC in the menu? If not, a self-imposed OCC is much tougher, you can't build some of the key NWs like Oxford and Globe Theatre. Not sure I'd like an isolated OCC, no warring and very little diplo. Those are two of the more fun aspects of the setting.

Churn out units at 1 every turn, raze 3 or 4 capitals of your enemies. Keep a couple great friends, keep everyone fighting, razing important cities, and then launch a ship.

Won 1910 IMM/Normal

FlyinJohnnyL said:

Did you select OCC in the menu?

Click to expand...

Yup--sent it over to the scenarios menu and just ran it as a Custom Scenario. Isolated OCC has its drawbacks--there's no way to trade for backfill techs (like the MC line) that I need to get Bio with Lib, and it's slow going to the Monarchy/Feudalism/Guilds line as well (which I usually head for after Bio). On the other hand, there's significantly less risk of, say, getting daggered by Shaka, so you take the good with the bad.

I don't suggest it on this map, though...



I typically play OCC to chill out, which means space. That's what I did here, but it came super-late.

Yeah, I probably play one OCC for every five regular games just to have less going on. Ill still tell anyone hat when I was a noob I learned more about the game playing one city than I did a standard game.

I'm continuing to work myself backwards with this series.
Noticed that the deity save was missing in this one, so I fixed that.
I'm up at T62 right now myself, and this looks like a rather nice map.

Makes sense, the deity save was missing cos Iso deity was considered almost unwinnable back then..
we have come a long way
This start looks almost easy (now) tbh, with such a great leader and so much food.

Yes, I hope to get revenge for the Boudica map.

Deity, NHNE


Optics contacts and the rest:


Post game analysis:

Sick game @krikav.