CommandoBob: A Series of Random Civs for Machiavelli

[Spoonwood]

Nice game.

Huge Regent has 3 spots open, Huge Emperor has 4 spots, Huge Demi-God has 6 spots, Huge Deity has 8 spots open. Standard Regent has 1 spot open. Large Emperor has 2 spots, Large Demi-God has 1 spot, Large Deity has 5 spots open. Small Deity has 4 spots open. For every size map on Sid, there are at least 4 spots open.

If you play lower levels, it generally works better to research faster than to proceed slowly. They won't launch on you (unless you fall into a "coma" of course, after all you did basically wipe out the AIs before 1900 AD in your game). You get access to the higher culture wonders of the middle ages early, and Shake's early which helps both in terms of getting more culture per turn earlier *and* you can construct buildings faster. It also helps a lot to get your 20k site up to size 12 as soon as possible. That is, up to size 12 with fully developed tiles also. With barbarians around this means a few units for defense/scouting, and your 2nd city pumps out workers to develop and grow the city by adding them in. I can't overemphasize enough that getting your capital to size 12 as soon as possible helps in this game, even if you want to play more aggressively than is needed for your victory, or have a shield-low start, or have other unfavorable starting conditions. I *strongly* recommend that you use the capital for a 20k game. Have you read T-hawk's article?

On another note, I have to ask a question. Have you ever studied formal logic? With the amount of detail you go into, I would believe that you would find it interesting if you haven't studied it already. Good texts that I've seen, go into as much detail you do.

 

[CommandoBob]

Thank you.

I think I have read T-hawk's article but I may have not paid much attention past the part where he rates the best civs for a 20K win. Here I am just taking whoever gets rolled up, good, bad or whatever.

I do plan to come back to this VC, but for the near future I am going to take a detour and work towards the Pentathlon (all five mapsizes) and Octathlon (at least six of the eight difficulties) prizes. I'll detail that in another thread. My last game in that will be one to clinch all three prizes at once.

I have never studied formal logic, but I was a big fan of Mr. Spock! Right now I work as a computer programmer, coding mostly in Java and Natural, with PeopleCode in the very near future. Programming sort of forces a certain mindset/viewpoint of how to do things; I am not sure how close that gets to formal logic.

 

[DWetzel]

I admire your persistence, but a random start simply isn't going to get it done for you (unless you get a really good random start, obviously). Even though it's a fairly long game by time standards, if you don't get off to a flying start, you're pretty much toast. Also, SGLs are sooooooo important (though getting on the table should be doable without one if everything else goes well) you might consider at least getting a scientific civ to start. (Yes, I know, this sort of goes against the random nature of things, but I think 20k is probably the most limited by the start site.)

On the other hand, assuming you can get a sufficiently good start, you can make that Huge Monarch table as an OCC.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I've been doing 20k games with the Arabs recently and have found using the capital works better, despite no palace prebuilds. All you need is a river, plenty of shields and at least 1 'feeder' city, usually a settler/worker pump, since your capital needs grown and developed fast.

 

[DWetzel]

Basically that's right. Around Monarch level (possibly emperor, depending), the AI will research fast enough for you to be constantly building culture -- at least late enough into the medieval age that it won't make much of a difference on time. That's one area where thawk's article is spot on - for a good time, you HAVE to be building culture basically all the time in your capital.