2007, November Game Of The Month

[Khilak]

Hey folks!! Late but in time (i hope so) i present you with this month's GAME!!

A CIV game in which you must reach the stars as soon as possible, in EMPEROR diffucilty. You will incarn the great Da, the chief of the Catalans people.

RULES- NO CHEATS ALLOWED
GOALS-Get to ALPHA a.s.a.p. (best date wins, 10k colonists only)

I will post my scores, i hope everyone does soon. I shall attach the files to this post.

The world is with small land mass, with little erosioning and very cold. That, added to 7 CIVS and EMPEROR difficulty, made me thing about a contest here

The files:

Catalans, you start with our capital (Barcelona)

Good game! Cant wait to read your stories

 

[Veni]

Sweet! Thanks, Khilak!

 

[Khilak]

Of course, i shall post my ALPHA date, to see if anyone can beat me !!

I am 1-1 with screech for the present moment (i won faster in Despotic in Reef barrier and he landed the SS sooner than me in Dack's great British scenario)

I guess the game will be more fun if we try to beat each other additionally to our friend IA

All hail to Sid Meier!!

 

[hannurabi]

I'm not that good player. I hardly ever even play on emperor.I prefer long epic games, over competitive games.

Oh, well I played my first gotm now anyway: My first try ended fast when rampaging greek militia took over Barcelona
Second try was better.I whiped out greeks, romans and poor aztecs who had zero production capital.I decided to stay in this island and let the world for other civs. Bloody mongols gave some trouble when settling in my island.They turned quite peaceful after few small wars.
1913 AD, I guess we will see lot earlier dates.

 

[Khilak]

Thanks a lot for your comments about the game, hammurabi.

I see you have formed republic quite soon ...

1040 BC: Russian civilization destroyed by Barbarians
1040 BC: CATALANS FORM REPUBLIC
1000 BC: CATALANS: 7 CITIES; 820,000 POPULATION
*** 1:Mongols 2:Catalans 3:French 4:Aztecs
1000 BC: Mongols build the Pyramids
980 BC: Catalans declare war on Mongols
920 BC: CATALANS DISCOVER INVENTION
860 BC: Mongols found the city of Ormuz
780 BC: CATALANS CAPTURE KASHGAR
760 BC: CATALANS DISCOVER GUNPOWDER
740 BC: Catalans make peace with Mongols
720 BC: Aztecs form Monarchy

i am now around 500 BC in the game, and i am fighting a long and ruinous battle against mongols, in their big southern island. I have colonized the western islands and found them empty...so i have cities there. i am less advanced than you at the moment but i hope a timely jump to democracy in combination with a greater number of cities, will allow me to build the SS faster than you did.

Keep on the good work! Screech, PLAY IT!

 

[Khilak]

Game won!

SS arrival date, 1870 ! I attach here the files, just for Pikachu's record on this mont'hs HOF!!

Great game, real fun but i found it maybe too easy to be Emperor diff..
And i did not cheat, and did NEVER go for president's day. Unhappinnes was hard on me all the game, but i managed to get 'round with it.

I attach here the civil1.sav and civil1.map and the replay text

About the history, it was decisive my expansion and posterior jump to democracy with 15 + cities. I think the no-corruption bonus is the best thing 'bout it

i am waiting for your results and my name in HOF, pikachu .D

 

[Pikachu]

RULES- NO CHEATS ALLOWED
GOALS-Get to ALPHA a.s.a.p. (best date wins, 10k colonists only)

Is launching a spaceship with 0% success chance allowed?

The world is with small land mass, with little erosioning and very cold. That, added to 7 CIVS and EMPEROR difficulty, made me thing about a contest here

This sounds like an awfully hard game, but I will give it a try some day. Thanks for starting this new GOTM.

 

[Khilak]

The spaceship MUST have at least the 3 basic modules (hab, lif sup and sol pann) and 2 engines, fueled. So you will have at least 99% chance.

The game is not that hard if you can deal with unhappiness. I suggest to be very careful when skipping to democracy and build pyramids a.s.a.p cause they will save your government often.

 

[Pikachu]

I tried playing this game today. I had a few problems, though.

Spoiler :

I started by sending my first militia to explore southwards, and there I found Athens totally unprotected. Unfortunately Alexander managed to build a unit before I could capture it, so I made peace instead and traded for Iron working and the wheel. The militia continued exploring fertile lands to the east of Greece where I planned to settle my second city. Then I should be strong enough for a war on Greece, but just before my first settler was finished, a green militia was approaching Barcelona at alarming speed. Barcelona had to switch from settler production to a military unit to handle the threat. For some strange reason I decided to waste a lot of shields on building a phalanx instead of a chariot. Anyway I made a brief peace with the Zulu, but now the Catalans were landlocked to a small and poor part of the continent. I tried on several occasions to attack southwards, but those Greek militias seemed invincible so I didn’t get anywhere. In the end the Greeks became too strong and wiped out the Catalan civilization.

In 1660 BC the second and last Catalan bastion fell. Game over

I guess I have to play this game one more time.

 

[Irish Caesar]

That was an enjoyable game, thanks Khilak!



It would seem that I'm rather out of practice with this little game (I can't believe it's been five years since our succession game experiment in this forum!), as I launched my craft in 1914 and landed in 1926. Da earned a civilization rating of 39%, which is at least better than V. I. Lenin...

***

With Irish Caesar serving in Emperor Da's court, the other inhabitants of their Catalan continent stood very little chance of survival. Athens was burned to the ground without a fight. Rome was captured. Any trace of cities built by Shaka and Hammurabi were quickly buried.

Unfortunately, travelers from the other corners of the world were not kind to our glorious nation. Genghis Khan of Greater Mongolia and Elizabeth of the United Kingdom of Britain and France soon took notice of our peaceful society, perceived us as a threat, and took brutal action. Our brave forces were able to hold onto our own continent, but were unable to make significant gains on their homelands... Irish Caesar advised that rather than spend vast resources conquering, it would be better to concentrate on peaceful technologies that would take us to the stars.

After long years of war and death, 10,000 of our finest heroes broke free of the Earth and planted the flag of our Wise Emperor Da on a far away world. As the planet Earth moans with the clash of arms and the blood of patriots and villains, our Catalan people have secured a peaceful and prosperous future for humanity.

 

[Comrade Aart]

Hello all my little Catalan friends! ^_^

Ahh! A mission to my heart. A space race! All those GOTMs where I have to kill people and search for respawned crappy little tribes were pretty boring; don't get me wrong, those missions are also nice, but "variation in a diet makes people eat".
For people who will read through the replay; note that I gave my cities Catalan names (or at least tried).
In the beginning I killed several kinds of tribes. First Greek, then Romans, then Russians (who foolishly spawned next to the ruins of Rome ) and then the Zulus. Thinking that all the land is mine, I also encountered Babylonians and Aztecs. Although I love company, my mercenaries (that popped out of the good huts) were to focussed on killing.
Being on an island, having a peaceful democracy is probably my best playing environment. It is really hard with (in this case) Mongolian hordes landing on the shores. But since my first goal was researching "Railroad", "Steam Engine" is on the way and then you can blast Mongolian triremes out of the coasts with your ironclads! This was also my strategy this time. I surprisingly didn't lose any cities, which of course took me quite some effort and lots of money.
In the end there were three peoples left: my people, the English (with a huge colonial empire) and the Mongolians. The Mongolians were in heavy decay though: pretty early I took their capital and later on I bought all their bigger cities.
In 1798AD I launched my ship that arrived in 1808AD. That was pretty cool. At some point the Mongolians were really worth nothing anymore and the English only send a few ships. This was the insurance of my early arrival.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/37014/GOTM07-08.rar
File contains:
- civil1.map
- civil1.sve
- replay.txt

PS: The replay file said I played until 1814AD or something, but the save game will tell you otherwise. Encountered quite some other bugs in this game as well:
- Me capturing my own cities :S
- Cities appearing empty but with several guarding units :S


PS: I had quite some training in this kind of environment. Just look at the stories I posted recently in the CivI General Discussion forum. End of shameless intermission.

 

[Pikachu]

I have started playing this game again. It took quite a few attempts to get anywhere, but after getting a legion from the hut east of Athens, things developed a lot better. I am progressing well now and have just discovered gunpowder and railroad. Unfortunately the French have developed a lot faster than me. They have just landed tons of mech. inf. in my territories and captured two of my cities. It looks like my civ will be toast soon, but I will do my best to catch up somehow. I imagine some diplomats could be useful

 

[Khilak]

Damn Comrade Aart!! You have beaten my score!!

I shall try to gather time to look up your replay and game saves, just to know what i did wrong!

I have 2 questions for you:

How you deal with unhappiness?? At what date / game milestone do you begin to allocate research/tax to luxuries? What rate?

What was the size of your cities during ancient ages? (Phalanx and chariots age)

 

[Comrade Aart]

Harhar!
Again: lots of experience on these kinds of maps made my strategy quite good. I'm still surprised the Mongolians didn't slaughter me, but my ironclads really intercepted 50 units or so.

Your questions:

->How you deal with unhappiness??

How I deal with unhappiness? Easy. My rule for if you have no happiness wonders:

NEVER BUILD AQUADUCTS!

(Later on I did, because I built "Cure for Cancer".)

-> At what date / game milestone do you begin to allocate research/tax to luxuries? What rate?

When I enter democracy, I always set my luxury to 20%. After that I only alter science and tax rates.

-> What was the size of your cities during ancient ages? (Phalanx and chariots age)

Varies heavily. To maintain necessary soldiers in the field, you often have to starve your people.
My best cities are like 6-8 and my underdeveloped ones are like 2-5.

 

[Pikachu]

I have finished the game

Spoiler :

It was a though starting position. I figured out that I had to play aggressively to be able to win. I geared the economy for conquest and did not have much resources left for researching. This proved to be a huge problem later. There was not enough land nearby to build a large empire. The only nearby enemy that survived for a while was the Mongols, and they did not research much either, so I didn’t get many useful technologies from my conquests. I didn’t build the pyramids either and was stuck with monarchy for a very long time and barely advanced at all. Finally I discovered democracy and things improved rapidly. But then the French attacked out of nowhere with lots of Mech. Inf. while I just had discovered gunpowder. Then I stopped researching and concentrated on stealing technologies and bribing French cities. Slowly I acquired the technologies nesessary to fight back against the French, but they took 4 of my 8 cities before I was able to stop their advance. After stealing many tecnhnologies I slowely regained territory and finally I was becoming as strong as the French and was ready to start the space race. Then the French nuked me like crazy, but that didn’t stop the Catalan space program. I won the space race, and after the space ship was launched it was time for a sweet revenge against the French. I dropped several nukes on French units and finally nuked Paris too. And that was it.

My spaceship arrived at Alfa Centauri in the year 2129 AD. Better late than never

 

[simonnomis]

I'm on this one at the moment too. Not going that well I have to say... my 'peaceful economic' strategy doesn't seem to work very well with such a poor landmass... should have blasted all those damn militant races away at the beginning!

 

[simonnomis]

Ok I finished this one... 1973 Spaceship Loss!

I think my strategy wasn't the best, as I mentioned before.

I tried my usual peaceful, defensive, economic strategy. Which backfired spectacularly against all the aggressive nations. First the Zulus needed to be sorted out. Then the Mongols. Then the French.

The Mongols only stopped being complete irritants when the French went and smashed the middle of their civilization out.

But then the French went on to be aggressive and declare war on me continuously (still at war now).

I should have conquered the whole continent I was on from the outset. Then just concentrated on defensive growth. With my cities being spread all over the world, the dispersion hampered me defensively (forcing me to maintain a lot of standing armies). And of course there was little room for centralisation of activity.

I got the trade routes in straight off, but even that wasn't enough to catch up with techs.

Technologically we weren't that far apart, and I raced things like nukes in order that the French didn't get the chance to use them against me.

But they started building their ship before me, and they played it quite clever. They built way more engines than normal. And when I finally got my space programme going (by selling everything off!), they just churned out the modules and they were off. With only 8years arrival time for their ship, I had no chance of catching them (mine is due in 1979).

Challenging scenario, well worth the effort.

 

[KrysiasKrusader]

Hi,

Found this place just roaming around the internet. Very nice site, especially with a seemingly active community on this fine old game.

Been a long time since I've played (the original) Civilization. I'm afraid that I am kind of rusty. Forgot how the different modules combined for the fastest spaceship. Also, disbanding units in cities does not render half the shield they cost to build. Any ways, I won't go on too much...

The starting location was full of tundra and arctic terrain. I quickly moved south and encountered the Romans and Zulus. (Oh no - the Zulus! They're nearly as bad as the Mongols. I remembered that much!) The Wheel became number one priority on my list, and once I got it, I switched all production to chariots till they were both destroyed. (Rome was the only city to not be destroyed by my conquests. I liked the surrounding area where it was situated, and it eventually became a magnificent city.) That left me alone on the continent to peruse a scientific and economic build. Then the Mongols showed up...

They landed boatload after boatload of units, for thousands of years. I refused to leave democracy, and fought them as they landed. Once I discovered the railroad and got the continent railroaded, things got easier. Eventually I got a couple of battleships to patrol my coast, and sank many Mongol invasion fleets, before they reached my shores.

They (the Mongols) must have destroyed all the other civilizations, as I met the French around the 1300's. I found only Paris, and it was but size 5 (?). I loaded up transports and got trade routes with that, as well as Samarkand. This later one, when I got 2 turns of peace, and before the Mongols couldn't stand it any more, and sneaked attack me - of course.

I wasted some time building cathedrals and other infrastructure on the eve of space flight being discovered. I forgot that there are less technologies to research, compared to CivII. I sold some off, so that I could afford a quick program of spaceship module, and component construction.

I completed this game, by landing in 1585 AD.

 

[Khilak]

Thanks a lot for your comments!! I shall try the last GOTM when i can take a little time