zerksees
in remission
I wanted to prove it wasnt a fluke. Thats why I started the game. I had lost my first attempt at emperor level and won the second, so I wanted to do it again to prove to myself that I had mastered the game at this level. So started a quest that turned into Zerkees first attempt at the High Score HOF.
I had won every game at warlord through monarch level as Xerxes. I played once, won and went to the next level. Heck I even won my first civ3 game as Americans at chieftain level. But Xerxes IV went down to defeat at the hands of the AI at emperor level. Xerxes IV did not expand fast enough and was unable to secure iron. I was still avoiding war in the early going and that was a mistake at emperor level. So as Xerxes IV was watching his first rifleman being produced, the Koreans launched the spaceship.
After that debacle, I went back to civfanatics web site for some refresher courses in the war academy. I came across the article called Strategy for Emperor and Deity Level. From this I created my second emperor game and Shaka I began his rule over the Zulu. With the Zulu and the aggressive strategy, I was able to defeat the AI and scored over 5000 points. It was touch and go for a while, but when iron appeared right next to the capital, Shaka I took advantage and started the wars. Many wars. In the end he dominated. Shaka had domination, histograph, conquest, and space ship as possible victory conditions. Culture and diplomacy were out.
So the game started on July 2, 2003.
I went with my usual settings of continents, standard map, moderate climate, roaming barbarians, seven randomly selected AI players, and all victory conditions enabled. Again I chose the Zulus as my civ and Shaka II was born.
Early game play went well. I found a settler in a goody hut and founded the second city in 3850 BC. Iron was nearby when the time came for that. I was able to build the Colossus, which really helped me keep up in tech.
I found that I had only two neighbors on my continent, the Babylonians and the Arabs. Of course I knew they were going to be the first victims of Shaka II. Babylon foolishly demanded money from me in 1725 BC. I am Shaka II with iron working and iron, am I going to give in to these demands? So the war started. Before long they were paying gold for peace. I started the second war, and again they paid for peace with gold and one city. I couldnt finish them because I was getting stretched thin and the Arabs were starting to look threatening.
During this second Babylon war, a Zulu Impi was involved in a battle and victorious, triggering a golden age. I hate when they come so early, but the extra gold helps a young civ keep up with the AI tech pace. It is now 1100BC, and I control all the iron I can see.
Since Babylon appears to no longer be a threat, I set my sights on the Arabs. After a while I was able to bring Babylon into the war. Since I controlled the iron, I traded some to Babylon to get a military alliance against the Arabs. During the war, to my surprise, the Arabs built the Great Library. It was completed just one turn before I took the city just north of it. I then successfully took the Great Library from them. I cut my tech spending to 10% and started waiting for the free techs to come in.
By 720 AD the Arabs were down to one city and gave their second last city, 37 gold and 7gpt. I wasnt paying close enough attention and this broke the MA trade I had with Babylon. Oops, hopefully this doesnt ruin me.
All these wars had produce some great leaders, which I put to work building the Pyramids, Sun Tzu and Leonardos Workshop. I had also built the Colossus outright, which did a nice job keeping me up in tech early in the game I have new respect for that wonder now.
In 740 AD I went to anarchy. I wanted to go from despotism directly to republic. This would save me another cycle of anarchy.
I changed my mind and decided to finish the Arabs. They were eliminated in 810 AD.
In 850 AD, the other civs starting getting connected to the Old World civs and the Great Library paid off. Over two turns I got eight techs: theology, chivalry, printing press, banking, astronomy, chemistry, navigation and education. I turned the tech spending back up. My score was 954. Until now, I had been in control of the scoreboard, but now I was fourth behind all the other civs.
In 880 AD I told the Babylonians Remove your forces from our territory or declare war! They chose war. They took some damage and gave me 3 cities for peace in 1160 AD. I then had some problems with my cities (and their old cities) culture flipping. Soon I got fed up with this and declared war on them again. I eliminated them in 1500 AD. Now the continent was mine.
At 1240 AD I was in fourth place in scoring: Korea at 1667, China at 1323, India at 1282, I had 1249, Babylon 1088, and Arabs had 535. I never saw the score for the unfortunate Mongols and Japanese. The Koreans eliminated the Mongols in 3000 BC and the Japanese in 390 AD.
Around this time I checked some of my save games from Shaka I, and determined I was ahead in scoring and technology. Hmmm could I score 6000+points with Shaka II?
Now the key was to get a foothold on the New World the other continent. In the New World, basically Korea owned the north, India had the middle and China had the south. There were a couple of other islands they had presence on. The Koreans and Indians were fighting, so I used this opportunity to fit a city in between the conquered Indian cities near the center of the continent. I put it on a hill, named it Outpost, and rush built a temple, barracks, walls, library and other improvements. Outpost was my entryway into the New World. At first I had to ferry units over with ships, which became tedious as Indian culture cut off the only unoccupied land route to Outpost. Soon I gained the technology and started building airports. I built five airports on the Old World and one in the New World.
I had to decide who was the biggest threat. In 1610 AD, shortly after founding Outpost, I joined India in a war against Korea. I pushed my boundaries north and east into Korean territory. On several occasions, I was able to take a city that Korea had just taken from the Indians, hence acquiring some former Indian cities. In 1710 AD I took a Korean city and eliminated one of their great leaders! I ended the war with them in 1725 AD, and now had seven cities on the New World.
During this time India was also at war with China, and they were getting the upper hand. In this sequence of events I spotted an opportunity to set up a UN vote for myself. China was losing, and someone else was taking them down. Seemed like I could get their vote by helping them. I started giving things to China: luxury, resource, and money. I was financing their war! It worked, China and India made peace, but too soon. China still had 6 cities left. China had been polite/cautious most of the game, so I felt I could keep them around as a minor player and get their vote for the UN victory condition.
Part of the reason I made peace with Korea was that India started looking too big now, and so at this time I set my sights on them. I built up my stack of doom and then went after India in 1792 (I am sure there were over a hundred units in there which is huge to me). I took cities near Outpost and worked my way south. I ended the war with them in 1822, and they had only 3 cities left on islands off the New World continent.
1822 was also significant because it was the year I started abandoning cities to avoid the domination limit. I did not want to raze them until over half the population was Zulu, so I had to wait until now. I was going by feel it looked like I was close to the domination limit.
In 1836 I opened my final campaign against the Koreans. In this war, I had China join me in hopes Korea would take some of their cities and I could retake those cities further depleting China. It worked, but only to reduce Chinas size to three.
Some of my newly captured Indian cities started culture flipping back. By 1842 four of them had defected. I lost a couple more and gave a couple to India to avoid the domination limit.
I had been close to the domination limit for a while, but in the mid 1800s I felt like I wanted to optimize my use of the land. I did not yet know about Mapstat, so I counted the tiles. I was close to the limit and kept adding or subtracting from the total as I would take cities or raze cities.
Unfortunately, a China boat dropped a settler on the New World and added a city in 1858. After that, I signed a ROP with China and I used ships to block all Chinas ports, and units to block all their borders.
I started preparing living quarters for the Indians. In 1880 I built them a city on the Old World continent (on the tundra I figured Ghandi needed to chill out!), far away from his old cities, and the cities I would later give him.
It took a while, but by 1892 I had eliminated the Koreans.
In 1908 I started my final campaign of the game against India. I cut them down to one city (now their capital), and then ended the war in 1916.
Sometime between 1850 and 1916 I decided this could be a high score HOF attempt. The lowest scores for emperor level were in the 6000 range. I thought if I would get 6800, I could make 9th on the list. When the final wars were over with India in 1916, I started doing the math.
Not only was I going for the HOF, I was planning an all-ways win.
· UN: I built it, and as I mentioned earlier, China was still in the game as my puppet for the UN vote. I had been gifting them worthless resources and keeping up the ROP to keep them polite. I planned to give India some cities right before the vote so they would be larger than China and get the other nomination.
· Culture: I was building culture at a quick enough rate to eclipse 100K and hopefully catch India at the right time. I noticed in 1950 that the Indians were impressed with my culture, and I had 61,905 culture points at the time.
· Space Race: I had already all components except one.
· Domination: I had been teetering on this limit for some time, so I knew I was only one settler away from reaching it.
· Conquest: Obviously both remaining AI were weak, so I could achieve this easily. The challenge would be taking all their cities in one turn, so the game I submitted would have had all choices. India was really crippled and had only a few units; so one MA per city would suffice. China had some infantry and cavalry; so more units would be needed. With ROP I could easily drop enough at each cities door.
· Histograph: Since I had built the UN without thinking about the end of the game, I was going to sacrifice this one. To get the UN vote, the game would have to end in 2041.
So I went about the business of retooling for population growth. I was replacing all mines with irrigation, and using extra cash and units to rush build improvements in outlying cities. The score was increasing by 27 per turn at the start of the 1960s, and I was able to crank it up to as much as 32 per turn, but then it faded back some. By 1980s I was really starting to crank up the luxury bar because there wasnt a whole lot else to do with the money (from 20 to 40%).
In 2002, I started doing the math on the culture victory, and figured I was going to overshoot the 124,000 or so points I would need to double Indias projected culture value. So I started selling old libraries and temples to cut my culture output from 700 to about 540 per turn.
I then discovered mapstat, and found I had 40 free tiles I could use before the domination limit of 1341 was reached. I picked some prime real estate and founded some cities, and culturally expanded others.
I also started cleaning up the map. I pillaged away all improvements that were not on my territory (including building improvements to clear ruins and then pillaging the improvements). The only thing left in the countryside was barbarians.
In the meantime an outside force changed my game plan: the new HOF list from 9/14/03. Now the low score was 7269 and I would need to beat that just to make it into the HOF. Hmmm. It was 2004 and I had 5947 points. I was making 31 per turn at the time. I decided to scrap the UN victory and use all the remaining turns to make the list. Slowly the score per turn decreased. Each time I was concerned that I would not make the score at the end so I would make adjustments to try and build it up. Many workers were joined to cities, and new cities were put in nooks and crannies to try to eke out more score. I took to micromanaging all the cities.
Another concern I had was that if I waited too long, I would miss my chance. My goal now was to beat the current #10 on the list and hope no one else submitted above that. So I started spending more free time to wrap up the game.
I tracked my score per turn, and kept a projected completion value.
More to come ....
And I noticed the 9/27 updates to the HOF
I had won every game at warlord through monarch level as Xerxes. I played once, won and went to the next level. Heck I even won my first civ3 game as Americans at chieftain level. But Xerxes IV went down to defeat at the hands of the AI at emperor level. Xerxes IV did not expand fast enough and was unable to secure iron. I was still avoiding war in the early going and that was a mistake at emperor level. So as Xerxes IV was watching his first rifleman being produced, the Koreans launched the spaceship.
After that debacle, I went back to civfanatics web site for some refresher courses in the war academy. I came across the article called Strategy for Emperor and Deity Level. From this I created my second emperor game and Shaka I began his rule over the Zulu. With the Zulu and the aggressive strategy, I was able to defeat the AI and scored over 5000 points. It was touch and go for a while, but when iron appeared right next to the capital, Shaka I took advantage and started the wars. Many wars. In the end he dominated. Shaka had domination, histograph, conquest, and space ship as possible victory conditions. Culture and diplomacy were out.
So the game started on July 2, 2003.
I went with my usual settings of continents, standard map, moderate climate, roaming barbarians, seven randomly selected AI players, and all victory conditions enabled. Again I chose the Zulus as my civ and Shaka II was born.
Early game play went well. I found a settler in a goody hut and founded the second city in 3850 BC. Iron was nearby when the time came for that. I was able to build the Colossus, which really helped me keep up in tech.
I found that I had only two neighbors on my continent, the Babylonians and the Arabs. Of course I knew they were going to be the first victims of Shaka II. Babylon foolishly demanded money from me in 1725 BC. I am Shaka II with iron working and iron, am I going to give in to these demands? So the war started. Before long they were paying gold for peace. I started the second war, and again they paid for peace with gold and one city. I couldnt finish them because I was getting stretched thin and the Arabs were starting to look threatening.
During this second Babylon war, a Zulu Impi was involved in a battle and victorious, triggering a golden age. I hate when they come so early, but the extra gold helps a young civ keep up with the AI tech pace. It is now 1100BC, and I control all the iron I can see.
Since Babylon appears to no longer be a threat, I set my sights on the Arabs. After a while I was able to bring Babylon into the war. Since I controlled the iron, I traded some to Babylon to get a military alliance against the Arabs. During the war, to my surprise, the Arabs built the Great Library. It was completed just one turn before I took the city just north of it. I then successfully took the Great Library from them. I cut my tech spending to 10% and started waiting for the free techs to come in.
By 720 AD the Arabs were down to one city and gave their second last city, 37 gold and 7gpt. I wasnt paying close enough attention and this broke the MA trade I had with Babylon. Oops, hopefully this doesnt ruin me.
All these wars had produce some great leaders, which I put to work building the Pyramids, Sun Tzu and Leonardos Workshop. I had also built the Colossus outright, which did a nice job keeping me up in tech early in the game I have new respect for that wonder now.
In 740 AD I went to anarchy. I wanted to go from despotism directly to republic. This would save me another cycle of anarchy.
I changed my mind and decided to finish the Arabs. They were eliminated in 810 AD.
In 850 AD, the other civs starting getting connected to the Old World civs and the Great Library paid off. Over two turns I got eight techs: theology, chivalry, printing press, banking, astronomy, chemistry, navigation and education. I turned the tech spending back up. My score was 954. Until now, I had been in control of the scoreboard, but now I was fourth behind all the other civs.
In 880 AD I told the Babylonians Remove your forces from our territory or declare war! They chose war. They took some damage and gave me 3 cities for peace in 1160 AD. I then had some problems with my cities (and their old cities) culture flipping. Soon I got fed up with this and declared war on them again. I eliminated them in 1500 AD. Now the continent was mine.
At 1240 AD I was in fourth place in scoring: Korea at 1667, China at 1323, India at 1282, I had 1249, Babylon 1088, and Arabs had 535. I never saw the score for the unfortunate Mongols and Japanese. The Koreans eliminated the Mongols in 3000 BC and the Japanese in 390 AD.
Around this time I checked some of my save games from Shaka I, and determined I was ahead in scoring and technology. Hmmm could I score 6000+points with Shaka II?
Now the key was to get a foothold on the New World the other continent. In the New World, basically Korea owned the north, India had the middle and China had the south. There were a couple of other islands they had presence on. The Koreans and Indians were fighting, so I used this opportunity to fit a city in between the conquered Indian cities near the center of the continent. I put it on a hill, named it Outpost, and rush built a temple, barracks, walls, library and other improvements. Outpost was my entryway into the New World. At first I had to ferry units over with ships, which became tedious as Indian culture cut off the only unoccupied land route to Outpost. Soon I gained the technology and started building airports. I built five airports on the Old World and one in the New World.
I had to decide who was the biggest threat. In 1610 AD, shortly after founding Outpost, I joined India in a war against Korea. I pushed my boundaries north and east into Korean territory. On several occasions, I was able to take a city that Korea had just taken from the Indians, hence acquiring some former Indian cities. In 1710 AD I took a Korean city and eliminated one of their great leaders! I ended the war with them in 1725 AD, and now had seven cities on the New World.
During this time India was also at war with China, and they were getting the upper hand. In this sequence of events I spotted an opportunity to set up a UN vote for myself. China was losing, and someone else was taking them down. Seemed like I could get their vote by helping them. I started giving things to China: luxury, resource, and money. I was financing their war! It worked, China and India made peace, but too soon. China still had 6 cities left. China had been polite/cautious most of the game, so I felt I could keep them around as a minor player and get their vote for the UN victory condition.
Part of the reason I made peace with Korea was that India started looking too big now, and so at this time I set my sights on them. I built up my stack of doom and then went after India in 1792 (I am sure there were over a hundred units in there which is huge to me). I took cities near Outpost and worked my way south. I ended the war with them in 1822, and they had only 3 cities left on islands off the New World continent.
1822 was also significant because it was the year I started abandoning cities to avoid the domination limit. I did not want to raze them until over half the population was Zulu, so I had to wait until now. I was going by feel it looked like I was close to the domination limit.
In 1836 I opened my final campaign against the Koreans. In this war, I had China join me in hopes Korea would take some of their cities and I could retake those cities further depleting China. It worked, but only to reduce Chinas size to three.
Some of my newly captured Indian cities started culture flipping back. By 1842 four of them had defected. I lost a couple more and gave a couple to India to avoid the domination limit.
I had been close to the domination limit for a while, but in the mid 1800s I felt like I wanted to optimize my use of the land. I did not yet know about Mapstat, so I counted the tiles. I was close to the limit and kept adding or subtracting from the total as I would take cities or raze cities.
Unfortunately, a China boat dropped a settler on the New World and added a city in 1858. After that, I signed a ROP with China and I used ships to block all Chinas ports, and units to block all their borders.
I started preparing living quarters for the Indians. In 1880 I built them a city on the Old World continent (on the tundra I figured Ghandi needed to chill out!), far away from his old cities, and the cities I would later give him.
It took a while, but by 1892 I had eliminated the Koreans.
In 1908 I started my final campaign of the game against India. I cut them down to one city (now their capital), and then ended the war in 1916.
Sometime between 1850 and 1916 I decided this could be a high score HOF attempt. The lowest scores for emperor level were in the 6000 range. I thought if I would get 6800, I could make 9th on the list. When the final wars were over with India in 1916, I started doing the math.
Not only was I going for the HOF, I was planning an all-ways win.
· UN: I built it, and as I mentioned earlier, China was still in the game as my puppet for the UN vote. I had been gifting them worthless resources and keeping up the ROP to keep them polite. I planned to give India some cities right before the vote so they would be larger than China and get the other nomination.
· Culture: I was building culture at a quick enough rate to eclipse 100K and hopefully catch India at the right time. I noticed in 1950 that the Indians were impressed with my culture, and I had 61,905 culture points at the time.
· Space Race: I had already all components except one.
· Domination: I had been teetering on this limit for some time, so I knew I was only one settler away from reaching it.
· Conquest: Obviously both remaining AI were weak, so I could achieve this easily. The challenge would be taking all their cities in one turn, so the game I submitted would have had all choices. India was really crippled and had only a few units; so one MA per city would suffice. China had some infantry and cavalry; so more units would be needed. With ROP I could easily drop enough at each cities door.
· Histograph: Since I had built the UN without thinking about the end of the game, I was going to sacrifice this one. To get the UN vote, the game would have to end in 2041.
So I went about the business of retooling for population growth. I was replacing all mines with irrigation, and using extra cash and units to rush build improvements in outlying cities. The score was increasing by 27 per turn at the start of the 1960s, and I was able to crank it up to as much as 32 per turn, but then it faded back some. By 1980s I was really starting to crank up the luxury bar because there wasnt a whole lot else to do with the money (from 20 to 40%).
In 2002, I started doing the math on the culture victory, and figured I was going to overshoot the 124,000 or so points I would need to double Indias projected culture value. So I started selling old libraries and temples to cut my culture output from 700 to about 540 per turn.
I then discovered mapstat, and found I had 40 free tiles I could use before the domination limit of 1341 was reached. I picked some prime real estate and founded some cities, and culturally expanded others.
I also started cleaning up the map. I pillaged away all improvements that were not on my territory (including building improvements to clear ruins and then pillaging the improvements). The only thing left in the countryside was barbarians.
In the meantime an outside force changed my game plan: the new HOF list from 9/14/03. Now the low score was 7269 and I would need to beat that just to make it into the HOF. Hmmm. It was 2004 and I had 5947 points. I was making 31 per turn at the time. I decided to scrap the UN victory and use all the remaining turns to make the list. Slowly the score per turn decreased. Each time I was concerned that I would not make the score at the end so I would make adjustments to try and build it up. Many workers were joined to cities, and new cities were put in nooks and crannies to try to eke out more score. I took to micromanaging all the cities.
Another concern I had was that if I waited too long, I would miss my chance. My goal now was to beat the current #10 on the list and hope no one else submitted above that. So I started spending more free time to wrap up the game.
I tracked my score per turn, and kept a projected completion value.
More to come ....
And I noticed the 9/27 updates to the HOF
Don't worry about not making it to the HoF because I think you have already made it. Please note that one of my Emperor score on the HoF will be dropped (Aeson just didn't have time to get to that yet), so one more slot will be openned up and unless someone else is playing (that we don't know about), I think your game will be there.
