RB1 - Cuban Isolationists

[Spatzimaus]

The worst part for me is, my parents needed some present ideas to get me for Christmas. And, like an idiot, I mentioned Civ4. So, I've had to wait two months to get the game, and I won't be able to install it onto my own machine until New Year's. As a result, I've been living vicariously through these SGs and walkthroughs, and planning out my own mod. Oh, and playing the 100-turn demo a few dozen times.

So, PLEASE post more turns! We'll have nervous breakdowns if you don't!

 

[Blackthorn27]

I haven't played the game in weeks: too busy stuffing the notes pages of my CivIV manual with little gems of info from Sulla, Sirian and contributors to this thread - awesome!

 

[Sullla]

Guys, I do plan to get to this game within the next few days. However, I have to finish my report for Epic One first, in order to have it ready for Monday. (You will have plenty more to read then, as most of the Realms Beyond community all post game reports at once! ) I expect to have the turns played and posted here by Monday or Tuesday.

In the meantime, feel free to read about some of my Multi-Player ventures of late, which I have written up and posted on my website.

http://civ4info.com/Sullla/civ4MP.html

 

[Sirian]

I haven't even started my Epic One report.

I may need to resist the temptation to do a full blown report and go with a trimmer version.





- Sirian

 

[Sirian]

Oh One More Thing(TM)...

I'm off the hook on my long delay. Sulla's week+ delay will put us back on even footing again, re-enabling all Tease Modes.

And yes, NOW I've started on my Epic One report. I hope to have most of it done by the start of the year. (The year 2007, that is!) (You didn't actually BELIEVE that I'd have the restraint to write a truncated report, did you?)


- Sirian

 

[Spatzimaus]

In the interest of non-bumping discussion, I'd like to ask the experts (Sullla and Sirian, obviously, plus any readers) a question; I've tried the Customization forum, but I don't often get GOOD players answering.

In reading through your combats, it always seemed that the ideal strategy would devolve to the same thing: bombard defenses to 0% from range, reduce defending units to 50% health with bombers or suicide artillery, and then roll in with the heavily-promoted Modern Armor, which'll almost never lose in those situations, even against optimized anti-armor enemies. (This isn't meant as a slight on you or anything, and I'm aware that if you CAN win with less bombardment then you might as well, to conserve resources.) The main reason seems to be that reducing a unit's health to 50% penalizes them in four ways (reduces their damage per round by ~30%, increases enemy damage per round by ~40%, reduces the chance of them winning each round, reduces the number of rounds they can survive by 50%), so they're pretty much ineffective at that point.

I'm trying to make a mod that extends the tech tree three more ages into the future, by mixing Alpha Centauri stuff in. But I need to make it so that the game actually gets that far, i.e., make it impossible for an aggressive civ to easily steamroll over everyone else. One of the changes I want to make, then, is a defensive building that caps damage from bombardment or collateral attacks at a lower amount (say, 25% instead of 50%). Is that too much? If enemies could have only been reduced to 75% health before attacking, would the Cubans have still rolled through? I don't want to make attacking impossible, but it's hard figuring out where the balance point is.

Likewise, I was also looking to add a simple defensive modifier based on cultural ownership (+1% per 5% ownership of the square) that couldn't be bombarded away. If all cities had an extra 20% defense, would that have completely shut down attacks, or would it still work?

 

[ugignadl]

Not the world's most enlightened perception I know, but I do believe the Cubans would have had a much harder time if the difficulty was ramped up a bit. Remember the context of the game . It's certainly possible (and fun) to successfully wage war on higher difficulty levels, but much harder and with less abandon than on those lower.

 

[Sirian]

In the interest of non-bumping discussion, I'd like to ask the experts (Sullla and Sirian, obviously, plus any readers) a question; I've tried the Customization forum, but I don't often get GOOD players answering.

In reading through your combats, it always seemed that the ideal strategy would devolve to the same thing: bombard defenses to 0% from range, reduce defending units to 50% health with bombers or suicide artillery, and then roll in with the heavily-promoted Modern Armor, which'll almost never lose in those situations, even against optimized anti-armor enemies. (This isn't meant as a slight on you or anything, and I'm aware that if you CAN win with less bombardment then you might as well, to conserve resources.) The main reason seems to be that reducing a unit's health to 50% penalizes them in four ways (reduces their damage per round by ~30%, increases enemy damage per round by ~40%, reduces the chance of them winning each round, reduces the number of rounds they can survive by 50%), so they're pretty much ineffective at that point.

I'm trying to make a mod that extends the tech tree three more ages into the future, by mixing Alpha Centauri stuff in. But I need to make it so that the game actually gets that far, i.e., make it impossible for an aggressive civ to easily steamroll over everyone else. One of the changes I want to make, then, is a defensive building that caps damage from bombardment or collateral attacks at a lower amount (say, 25% instead of 50%). Is that too much? If enemies could have only been reduced to 75% health before attacking, would the Cubans have still rolled through? I don't want to make attacking impossible, but it's hard figuring out where the balance point is.

Likewise, I was also looking to add a simple defensive modifier based on cultural ownership (+1% per 5% ownership of the square) that couldn't be bombarded away. If all cities had an extra 20% defense, would that have completely shut down attacks, or would it still work?

The best advice for modding is to test it yourself. Play, get in to the situations you want to test, and save the game. Then load up that game over and over with the various mod settings and find the balance you are looking for. You can also mock up contrived battles with the Worldbuilder, but real-game situations are generally more instructive in my view.

Since it's your vision, there's no substitute for your judgement in regard to it. Keep working until you're happy with it.


In other news... Reporting on Epic One will begin in just a few hours!


- Sirian

 

[Methos]

(You have no idea how much we went over this in testing, trying to make sure that no one would be able to clean sweep the early religions... and now Sirian does it in our VERY FIRST GAME!!! )

In Meth01: Culture, with no Wonders we started off with two oasis tiles. Figuring I’d give it a chance I attempted to get both Buddhism and Hinduism, and did. During our research for Polytheism I popped a hut and received Masonry. Obviously figured why not and went for Judaism as well. The next player got it and Budhinjews were born once again.

Point is it appears if you start off with Mysticism and have a couple good commerce tiles, sweeping the early religions isn’t that hard. Even had we not gained Masonry from a goody hut I still believe we could have gotten Judaism.

 

[Speaker]

In case anyone is interested (), Realms Beyond Civilization Epic 1 reports can be read here.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Not the world's most enlightened perception I know, but I do believe the Cubans would have had a much harder time if the difficulty was ramped up a bit.

No question, they'd have a harder time, but my big concern is to make sure it's still possible. It'd be easy to code in a brick wall that'd make military assaults impossible. That's the big reason I asked for feedback; I'm perfectly willing to test it out myself, but an experienced player has a better FEEL. Plus, since the balance changes throughout the game, an early test case might not cut it.

For instance, take the defense boost I mentioned. If each city always retained a 20% defense bonus, no matter how much you bombarded, it's the same as if you had voluntarily stopped bombarding when the culture mod was down to 20%. If you had been forced into that situation, would you feel the late-game military stampede was still viable? Or, in your experience, did you feel you HAD to take off those last few percent, even with the City Raider II Modern Armor?
Likewise, the collateral-limiting building idea. If you couldn't have bombed an enemy below 75% health without risking actual units, would it have still been possible to roll over everyone? Or would you have lost so many units that you'd run out of attackers before each enemy ran out of cities? That's kind of what I'm aiming for; still possible, but too expensive to sustain itself indefinitely.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

No question, they'd have a harder time, but my big concern is to make sure it's still possible. It'd be easy to code in a brick wall that'd make military assaults impossible. That's the big reason I asked for feedback; I'm perfectly willing to test it out myself, but an experienced player has a better FEEL. Plus, since the balance changes throughout the game, an early test case might not cut it.

For instance, take the defense boost I mentioned. If each city always retained a 20% defense bonus, no matter how much you bombarded, it's the same as if you had voluntarily stopped bombarding when the culture mod was down to 20%. If you had been forced into that situation, would you feel the late-game military stampede was still viable? Or, in your experience, did you feel you HAD to take off those last few percent, even with the City Raider II Modern Armor?
Likewise, the collateral-limiting building idea. If you couldn't have bombed an enemy below 75% health without risking actual units, would it have still been possible to roll over everyone? Or would you have lost so many units that you'd run out of attackers before each enemy ran out of cities? That's kind of what I'm aiming for; still possible, but too expensive to sustain itself indefinitely.

Another option might be to add some better anti-air defenses (and keep artillery capped)

 

[CORVINUS]

Siran and Sulla:
A great read but finnish off the infidels already. I don't have CIV4 yet nor do I have net access at home, due to excess paranioa. I will wait for a next release of CIV 4 when bugs discussed in this thread have been corrected.
I am glad they made the AI smarter!

 

[BeefontheBone]

FWIW, most of them have been fixed - this game was started way back before the first patch was released.

If you're reading those Epic 1 reports and don't want to read a long one, mine was quite short (Regrettably, that's because the AI wiped me off the map, but still...)

 

[smegged]

Looks like the RB forums are down for the first time in pretty much as long as I can remember My report actually had a good explanation of why Sirian and Sulla could not get a city from bombardment alone.

 

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Looks like the RB forums are down for the first time in pretty much as long as I can remember

Yeah, I'm not sure if I find this amazing or frightening...

Good thing I had managed to read all reports posted until then, but I would have loved to see if somebody had commented on mine...

Ah well, tomorrow it will be, then. Good night...

-Kylearan

 

[Blackthorn27]

This Cuban Isolationists' game is a cool example of the power of the Hydra. I'm a novice at CIV IV (only played one game so far), so what follows might not work, but it has occurred to me that one possible way to deal with this Hydra strategy might be to fool the Hydra into thinking that you only have modest military forces. Because the Hydra can spy into foreign cities that share the same state religion as the Hydra, I suggest keeping a fairly modest military presence in your cities. By building large SoD's and positioning them at strategic locations outside your cities, you should be prepared for any sledgehammer attacks the Hydra makes. Keeping these SoD's dormant and regularly upgraded might be the key to cope with the aggressive Hydra we have witnessed in this thread and may well prepare you for a good counter attack.

One way the Hydra might combat this idea would be to research Communism and get proper spies to confirm exactly what military strength the opposition has.

 

[lost_civantares]

By building large SoD's and positioning them at strategic locations outside your cities, you should be prepared for any sledgehammer attacks the Hydra makes. Keeping these SoD's dormant and regularly upgraded might be the key to cope with the aggressive Hydra we have witnessed in this thread and may well prepare you for a good counter attack.

That stratagy might prove expensive though, remember that each unit will cost at least 100 gold per upgrade, which can get quite expensive if you want to impress the guy watching you, and when your at the point where you're impressing the guy with your large numbers of modern units, you should be, in theory, at the point where you could mount a good defensive option. (and any way, since when is sirian going to allow overwhelming force to deter him? Just read his other icy rb tale!)

 

[Blackthorn27]

The idea I was thinking of was that you build your SoD's outside your cities at locations that aren't visible to the Hydra's religious reconnaissance, so that when the Hydra's forces come across your borders you can combat them with a lot more force than the Hydra expects. The plan is to keep as many of your SoD's in the fog of war as long as possible .

 

[lost_civantares]

oops! Maybe I should have read that again! Now your idea makes much more sense for opposing crazy people like Sirian and Sullla!

Anyway, It's high time for Sullla to tell us what's going on!