G-Major 137

[Pangaea]

Goddamnit! Why can I not play a game without half a dozen things going tits up?



Would be nice f'ing great to play a game on my terms for once. The sick thing is that Peter was almost Friendly with me at this point, at +9 relations. He apparently got some famine event too, gave me food (can't say I saw any of it...) so we were on +6 from each such event alone.

Good luck defending that city with a handful of soldiers against a massive army. My main force is now outsides the gates of Delhi, hopefully I'll take it next turn if the lone spy revolts it. Peter will surely take that city - a quick whipped wall will not do much against such a force - then I suppose I need to draw the army back to fight this plank instead. Gah, so frustrating. Libbed Biology this turn, but neh, lets twist the knife around instead

 

[Seraiel]

In every good round, I need to recapture one of my cities. The situation is slightly different usually, because I lose the city through being sniped and me having 0 defenses, unless for Happiness.

Did you deny one of Peters demands? Even if pleased, Peter is one of the most dangerous AIs when having 7+ tiles shared borders, you need to always keep him busy by going against someone else. Bribing him should be easy with a tech-level like yours. DoWs at pleased are always annoying, I know.

 

[Pangaea]

Don't think he has made any demands, but I have stopped trading with 2 or 3 times because I wanted to keep good relations with the rest of the map, who hated him and asked me to cut off ties. So right now I couldn't even talk to him, so don't know if it would have been possible to bribe him, but I assume so, as he hates Hammurabi because they've been at war 2 or 3 times.

I sometimes lose cities to snipes too, though it hasn't happened in this game. Obviously I'm going to lose that city, however, and maybe more depending on how quickly he moves. I'm sure I can knock him back eventually even if that is a 40-unit stack, but it loses me lots and lots of time, and of course many units that could have been taking Indian cities instead. My plan was to take every Indian city and then sit back and tech. Or alternatively cap him earlier, but that wasn't really my preference as I'm only 24% or something like that and need more cities. Don't want to heavily colonise the New World in this game, because it was sort of a nightmare in the late game due to rapidly expanding borders.

Peter's land is a bit crap too, mostly tundra and plains, so I don't really want to wipe him out by taking his stuff. Fur aside, there is little value there.

Essentially I wish it was possible to play one of these games where I can pick my own wars and direct the decisions myself. This game I've been DOWed by Roosevelt, Asoka and now Peter. The two former was sort of okay, because I wanted their cities anyway, and this way I didn't get diplo penalties, but it's naturally better when you can line up your army, attack, and take a city or two in turn 0-2 of the war, instead of frantically whipping units to defend border cities and slowly get an army assembled in the right places.

Reading the other updates (mainly only you and yyeah, but I wonder what the others are up to... why so shy?) this doesn't appear to happen to you guys, so I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

 

[Seraiel]

I told you what you're doing wrong, at least 2 or 3 times already. You never reacted on it, so you may have overlooked, that I gave you the keys to not having AIs bribed onto you already.

Peter is a different case. You shouldn't have traded with him and then cut of trades, don't trade with Worst Enemies. If you could have kept him busy via bribes, you'd not be in this situation. As I think about it, I wonder if Peter even is pleased to you. You took some high peaceweight vassals, I'd bet in reality, he's annoyed or at least cautious, which makes his DoW on you very sure, I think he only got 10-30 noWarProbs on those stances.

 

[ZPV]

Don't think he has made any demands, but I have stopped trading with 2 or 3 times because I wanted to keep good relations with the rest of the map, who hated him and asked me to cut off ties. So right now I couldn't even talk to him, so don't know if it would have been possible to bribe him, but I assume so, as he hates Hammurabi because they've been at war 2 or 3 times.

I sometimes lose cities to snipes too, though it hasn't happened in this game. Obviously I'm going to lose that city, however, and maybe more depending on how quickly he moves. I'm sure I can knock him back eventually even if that is a 40-unit stack, but it loses me lots and lots of time, and of course many units that could have been taking Indian cities instead. My plan was to take every Indian city and then sit back and tech. Or alternatively cap him earlier, but that wasn't really my preference as I'm only 24% or something like that and need more cities. Don't want to heavily colonise the New World in this game, because it was sort of a nightmare in the late game due to rapidly expanding borders.

Peter's land is a bit crap too, mostly tundra and plains, so I don't really want to wipe him out by taking his stuff. Fur aside, there is little value there.

Essentially I wish it was possible to play one of these games where I can pick my own wars and direct the decisions myself. This game I've been DOWed by Roosevelt, Asoka and now Peter. The two former was sort of okay, because I wanted their cities anyway, and this way I didn't get diplo penalties, but it's naturally better when you can line up your army, attack, and take a city or two in turn 0-2 of the war, instead of frantically whipping units to defend border cities and slowly get an army assembled in the right places.

Reading the other updates (mainly only you and yyeah, but I wonder what the others are up to... why so shy?) this doesn't appear to happen to you guys, so I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

My game's a little different - I'm playing on high seas so my AIs are gimpy and can't build big stacks.
I got dogpiled (to no real harm) on my first war after Alphabet, and after that I made sure either to bribe everyone against everyone else or else beg/demand 10 gold for a peace treaty. It's the first 10 turns of a war when the AI is most likely to bribe each other to join in.

 

[Pangaea]

I told you what you're doing wrong, at least 2 or 3 times already. You never reacted on it, so you may have overlooked, that I gave you the keys to not having AIs bribed onto you already.

Peter is a different case. You shouldn't have traded with him and then cut of trades, don't trade with Worst Enemies. If you could have kept him busy via bribes, you'd not be in this situation. As I think about it, I wonder if Peter even is pleased to you. You took some high peaceweight vassals, I'd bet in reality, he's annoyed or at least cautious, which makes his DoW on you very sure, I think he only got 10-30 noWarProbs on those stances.

Well, since I'm dense and know nothing, could you repeat it?

Shouldn't have traded with him, that was a mistake. Didn't exactly do much, though, think I had open borders at some point, and gave him a resource for 8GPT or something like that. Other than that, I've tried to keep in the good books of the AIs, but it's difficult. I have +4 trade with everybody important, but they keep demanding one thing or the other, and I can't please everybody. Either you'll piss off people by agreeing to the demand, or you'll piss off whoever demanded it by rejecting the demand. For instance Hammurabi demanded I changed to Buddhism, that nobody else has. I can't agree to that, or the rest of the map will hate me. I also waited a long time to take a religion, because the map was split between three, and as long as I didn't have one I had okay to good relations with all, instead of good with 1 and hatred from the rest.

Also got for common wars earlier, including with Peter actually because we were both at war with Freddie for a time.

Not sure how I could have prevented all these things. If possible I always beg gold when declaring war too, like with Elizabeth when I got her to change to Hinduism so she became Pleased.

Perhaps the layout of the AIs made things a bit more difficult, and especially the distribution of religions. de Gaulle is far in the NW, and has been at peace the whole game I think. Peter was closer to me, but not a neighbour. With one of those guys close, it would have been easier to workersteal early without lots of and to get fellow from common wars.

My game's a little different - I'm playing on high seas so my AIs are gimpy and can't build big stacks.
I got dogpiled (to no real harm) on my first war after Alphabet, and after that I made sure either to bribe everyone against everyone else or else beg/demand 10 gold for a peace treaty. It's the first 10 turns of a war when the AI is most likely to bribe each other to join in.

I've begged gold many times to try to stay out of wars, but they still hit me from time to time. There has also been a two-front war for big parts of the game, and this is yet another one. It's a hassle to deal with, because it's so much easier when you can pull all forces in one direction. With a big empire, two fronts are tricky because it takes such a long time to get from one side to the other.

 

[Seraiel]

Remember when I told you, that I'd give up this game because of the distribution of Religions? Now you say, you want a game in which everything goes your way. Really, no hard feelings, but you either need to learn to be more patient about getting a game, and really throw away those that develop badly early, or you need to accept, that you don't have all possibilities. I accepted that I didn't get the GLH in my game, that was the only thing I'd had accepted though. I saw, that it'd gonna be a big lovefiest very early, which is perfect, because it enhances tech-speed tremendously. I furtheron knew that I had almost endless amounts of Forests, so another criteria was positive on the white-list. Mids went to a civ I could conquer, I think this was the 3rd thing I "demanded" the game to have, so 3 good things, 1 bad thing. Your game got like 4 of 4 bad things.

Whatever. You can not get bribes, by finding out who could be bribed against you by whom, and giving that target all the techs the other civ would have. No tech, no bribe.

And you didn't comment on if Peter really is pleased or if he's cautious or worse. I was right, wasn't I? Peter is at least annoyed, because you took Frederick as a vassal, and he's annoyed towards Frederick, so he's also annoyed towards you, right? Don't forget the advice I gave you about taking vassals, when you stepped up onto Deity.

 

[Pangaea]

Ah okay, back to that.

I'm not exactly sure how that common diplomacy thing works. Is Friendly + Cautious = Pleased? Something in between, sort of? +8 + -4 = +2? I don't know.

Can't imagine he'd be Annoyed though. War has been declared now, so things are very different, but looking at the numbers, he would have been Cautious with Mansa and Frederick, and he was Pleased (almost Friendly, though that doesn't matter) with me. So that probably means Cautious in reality.

I just get a headache from this though.

You should peace vassal somebody so you get good tech helpers.
Don't vassal. You'll feck up the diplo.
Don't play the game unless all the planets line up perfectly, and a pig flies by your window, with a cute hat on.

A bit hyperbolic, but there is so much conflicting advice, and it's literally impossible to follow all of it.

Okay, maybe I've been too impatient, maybe I should have tried 20 games for 200 turns, but that just isn't me. It would bore me to tears. I would think there should be a way to play this game to a good level without getting everything (almost) 100% perfect with maps, AIs, huts, techs, religions, and probably other things.

In any case, it looks like I won't have time to finish this game, as I have to leave next week some time, and will be gone for at least a week. Time flies quickly, it's summer, and there is still at least 100 hours to play in this game.

 

[Seraiel]

Peace vassals of the same religion, often don't funk up all diplo, and when you play a game with a love-fiest, chances are good to remain trade-relations with everybody. Don't take the wrong vassals would be good advice.

And regarding getting a game where one dominates from the start 'til the end: If waiting and playing for something like that isn't you, ok, then you need to accept, that something will make you angry in the course of it. It's impossible to dominate a Deity-game completely and to have everything right, unless one sorts out all games, that have too many things not going perfectly in the beginning.
Also: The criteria I listed are not really that super-rare as you describe. Love-fiest as a religion often happens, starting in the right belt to have lots of Forests, almost the case with all Gold-starts, and Mids where one can conquer them, that's maybe a 50% chance on this map. GLH too again is 50% chances, so I'd guess that one needs to play between 10 and 20 openings, to have one where everythings ok.
What's worse, playing a decent number of openings or not having all options in mid- to lategame? You decide.

And don't forget, that this is the most legendary Gauntlet ever, so the level of competition is very high. If this was a normal Gauntlet, you'd probably be on the first 3 places with your game, and if this was a normal HoF-game, you'd have the #1 slot on almost all map-sizes.

 

[Pangaea]

Well, well, Asoka will cap. Should I do it?

With 9 cities he could be useful, but I did want all his sh*t, and I only have 44 cities and 25% land.

Spoiler :

Asoka is willing to give me a city + cap, so he's hurting bad after I took his rather nice capital. Next city on the chopping block has Hagia + Zeus, but I need to turn around and deal with the backstabbing PoS Russian first.



Rest of India

Spoiler :

Some jungle left, but that also means juicy grassland.

Overview map of Eurasia. de Gaulle and Mansa are way up north, sort of like an oversized Scandinavia.

Spoiler :

 

[Seraiel]

Given your situationi with the Russians already having stolen one city, I'd probably cap him. Hard choice, because he has nice land and he has his city exactly where one wanted to have some to whip Galleons for some Forest-cities in the new world. Still it's Asoka, an excellent researcher. If you push him so that he advances some era and maybe give him 2 cities back, he's gonna make a formidable ally.
You should try to get to 60 cities though, so if not Asoka, then you will need someone else (-> Lizzy? She's very weak and also has her cities at the right location) .
Finding enough techs to make full use of your vassals researching-capacities should be np.

 

[Pangaea]

Given your situationi with the Russians already having stolen one city, I'd probably cap him. Hard choice, because he has nice land and he has his city exactly where one wanted to have some to whip Galleons for some Forest-cities in the new world. Still it's Asoka, an excellent researcher. If you push him so that he advances some era and maybe give him 2 cities back, he's gonna make a formidable ally.
You should try to get to 60 cities though, so if not Asoka, then you will need someone else (-> Lizzy? She's very weak and also has her cities at the right location) .
Finding enough techs to make full use of your vassals researching-capacities should be np.

Tough decision, I agree, because the land is good, I want more cities, and I want more workers too. That's another thing it's hard to capture when you can't declare on your own terms, as they just keep moving inland and out of reach. Peter hasn't taken that city yet btw, but he will in a turn or two when the Wall is bombed away. Lizzie is who I'm thinking about to take on next as well, though I probably wouldn't need that if I took out Asoka fully. Perhaps he'll be more useful as a techer though. I can't quite decide. Probably the smarter choice to just cap him, however, so I can move the full army back to Peter and kick his arse. Hopefully he parks his troops in a city somewhere, so I can assault him with mostly city raider units. Probably easier than in the open actually. Well, maybe not, considering I'm building lots of Knights. I'll see what happens, and what I decide. Tomorrow.

 

[Seraiel]

Don't overlook that I wrote, that you should aim for 60 to 65 cities. It's very likely, that you will need to conquer Lizzy either way. Shouldn't be a problem to do so, you got more than twice as much military as she got. You can probably run 3-4 stacks and take her empire with a Blitz.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

And don't forget, that this is the most legendary Gauntlet ever, so the level of competition is very high. If this was a normal Gauntlet, you'd probably be on the first 3 places with your game, and if this was a normal HoF-game, you'd have the #1 slot on almost all map-sizes.

Good point to remember - this Gauntlet is chasing what many thought was an untouchable HoF record and the level of play is amazing.

 

[ZPV]

I've now reached the point where I'm 1 turn from Sushi - which will be founded t323 which feels a bit late.
Kremlin came 3 turns after Communism, and National Park is done. Wall Street will be done next turn too.

My next micromanagement exercise is to try and set up enough overflow in a 5 turn Slavery/OrgRel/Merc window to 1-turn most of my executives. I realise that some cities will need 2 execs but it should still be possible.
The main tactics are:
1) Whip a building in OR, then switch out of OR before completing the building.
Courthouses, Libraries and Temples are the main candidates. Cities with forges or some production capability will be able to do one 200h executive per building whipped.
2) Chain-whip Worker->Settler to build up overflow.
3) Chop forests!

My future civic plans are:
Free Market until I launch the spaceship - then consider State Property if I need to switch off Sushi culture.
One slavery/OR window for whipping factories and/or mining execs and potentially abusing executive gold.
One 1-turn Cristo Slavery window for setting up overflow for space parts.
Caste/Pacifism the rest of the time.

No Free Religion, because I'm deliberately sending the wrong missionaries to the new world so borders won't pop from an autospread.
Mercantilism has a few turns when it's probably better than Free Market, which will really take off once corporate spread kicks into gear.

 

[Pangaea]

Sounds very impressive ZPV, especially those micro plans. Food for thought.

Remember I mentioned Asoka had a city that would have been next on the chopping block with Zeus in it? I capped him and soon later got the Sports League event. Could have been a free Golden Age

Don't think it's worth doing without that possible reward. Colosseums are basically crap.

 

[shulec]

I just realized that Representation doesn't scale for Marathon. Tech costs are much higher, but Rep specialists still give only +3.

 

[Testhero]

Thanks for the post misterfilmgeek, it's good to hear others are learning much from the thread, even if they are not playing the gauntlet themselves..

That is why I am here too learning some great stuff playing an immortals rush against teams so lots of pure gold here. Shulek's The whip overflow into gold won't work for me either failed first time like you did Unlike you as I am playing Vanilla 1.61 I think the overflow is simply being lost

All victory conditions must probably be present to prevent even more abuse/tricks/whatever that are already in use. For this game for instance, it could then be possible to wipe out most of the opponents in the old world, and then settle virtually everything in the new world as well, giving you a staggering base to conduct research with. I don't want to think about the corporate upkeep for that, but maybe it would be possible. I'd like it the domination was higher though, because I haven't settled that heavily. All of the equivalent of Central and South America is still free, and fair chunk of the North too, but now it is indeed a problem for me, and I would have been better off by not settling some of those cities.

And as the high score by IronHead was set using all victory conditions you would not have a comparable game (excluding BtS 1.71 update) if Dom. limit was bigger or off.

@Seraiel, that's a good tip if the AI won't accept cities I suppose. Will keep it in mind, though I don't like the GPT trade trick to get lots of gold back, which is why I don't use it. I remember one HoF game I checked out, and the player got utterly vicious amounts of gold per turn, and it left a sour taste in my mouth.

Anyone know if that trick was used in Ironheads game?

I feel it is exploiting poor code in the BtS expansion pack rather than the normal AI stupidity that most exploits avail of.
If the AI had some mechanism for reviewing trades like they do for begging that would by Ok but as there is no code for them it feels like cheating. But that will be argued endlessly in another thread. (always wanted to use that)

You guys are putting 120 hours into the game and still posting enough to make this thread seem endless I sat down to read from post page 40 to page 80 and you are up to 92 94 already

 

[yyeah]

Geez i was seting up my whole game to peace vassal Mansa and now hes too strong .

What circustances are needed ( i dont know how to say it) for AI, except diplo, so he can peace vassal to me ?.

Points? army power ? Where i can check it ?

 

[shulec]

Geez i was seting up my whole game to peace vassal Mansa and now hes too strong .

What circustances are needed ( i dont know how to say it) for AI, except diplo, so he can peace vassal to me ?.

Points? army power ? Where i can check it ?

It's your power rating. It may be related to distance/shared borders, but I believe it is mostly related your power rating compared to the intended peace vassal.

WastinTime talks about it in the G-Major 134 thread.

I think Mansa became my vassal at about 1.6. I researched Feudalism relatively early to ensure he would be my vassal.