2. open game:easy immortal space-race (easy = great starting position)

[Snaaty]

@ shyuhe, mrchadt, Galileo:

Thanks for the quick replays

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@ all:

Spoiler :

Meanwhile I also left for the starts, but it was only after 1900 AD. This was due to me having no coal and only the 8 cities I had from the beginning. I played this game through in only 4 sessions I think (little more then 3 hours).

Another thing that slowed me down greatly was the fact, that in my game (thanks to my bribing activities), only Monty and Brennus were left and did run merk up to the end, because they were constantly locked in a war. So I also had to run merk...

Still I was quite comfortable in tech lead (3 techs on Monty, the closest rival), so no real danger there. In the end, Monty even started to burn some costline cities from Brennus, so I think his war was going very well.

I also did ran a golden age in the end, but it was more or less for show, because I never really was in danger in the space race.

So in the end, I really did manage to bring home this game wihtout ever going to war and without building a single unit, even with mainly warmongers on my conti

I will post my final save when I have closed this round

 

[mrchadt]

I'm very impressed with your moving inland idea snatty, it serves a couple of purposes other then blocking the ai.

1. It makes your capital more central in your empire, reducing mantainance costs.

2.It is a more effective fog buster. Cultural borders expanding into the sea does nothing to stop barbarians.

On the topic of barbarians, does anyone have a guide to their activity, ie when they start to attack cities or pillage and what is the best system of fog busting. Thanks

 

[Snaaty]

I'm very impressed with your moving inland idea snatty, it serves a couple of purposes other then blocking the ai.

1. It makes your capital more central in your empire, reducing mantainance costs.

2.It is a more effective fog buster. Cultural borders expanding into the sea does nothing to stop barbarians.

On the topic of barbarians, does anyone have a guide to their activity, ie when they start to attack cities or pillage and what is the best system of fog busting. Thanks

I never thought about the upkeep thing, but you are right... ...I just had a quick glance on my last save and found out that I in fact never even bothered to build the forbidden palace (had always enough money)

Concerning barbs:

Their activity is a bit level dependend:

On immortal I think they start entering your territory around 2200 BC (emperor 2000 BC, deity 2500 BC).

When you want to play save, build 2-3 warriors (warrior, worker warrior, warrior settler, archer, archer = also good to grow your first city to a decent size) early and use them as fogbusters (research archery ASAP), so you can place archers on strat important places before barbs invad you (places, where barbs keep comming through, because you can´t/won´t fogbuster all there). City-spam when you have fogbustered out your area...

I proceded exactly in this way in my game here, so you can have a closer look on my first save so see exact datas of reseach and so on...

 

[Mutineer]

Well, seens I am figting non stop I can not play that fast, so my save will be abit more late.

 

[Mutineer]

well, Played to 1715.

From 1400 to this time I did try to stay in peace. Develop, trade, ets.
I useally do not do that, but allmost all of my gp were GP's, so I stick them in my buddist holly city capital and build a Wall Street there, making it really gold city. Biggest problem is that Brennus and Peter are friends. I send Peter to war Mongold again and he Vassal mOngols.
May be I should have tryed to Vassal them myself, but was not really able to affort war.
Research wize went to democracy, Buld Taj Maxal and Statue of liberty. Iron works in capital. I am still in burocracy, but now towns coming up, it is probably time to go to free speach soon.

Brenus/hatty war, well Brenus allmost got Hatty but made peace befor vassaling her.

Brenus will be a new tech leader, Peter was slow down a lot. Not sure what I will do, probably beeline to internet, may be. Not sure.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/84898/Snaaty_AD-1715.CivWarlordsSave

 

[lilnev]

I'm not to 1700 yet, but in the late 1500s it's going very well. I took a big bite out of Monty, now I'm doing the same to Peter. Slight tech lead. Fuller report tomorrow.

peace,
lilnev

 

[Snaaty]

@ Lilnev:

No problem, I will wait then till tomorrow (until your 1700AD save and/or summary is in) with the 1700 AD report.

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@ Multineer:

Thanks for your save

...

@ all:

With Multineer & Lilnev, we have 8 saves for 1700 AD. I think with 8 saves I will find the time to do a "proper" summary of this turnset (I will start tonight...)

 

[Snaaty]

@ Galileo44:

I couldn´t download your 1700 AD save (file not found error). I would like to include it in my summary... ...so if you could post it again?

 

[Galileo44]

I think that this will work (one of the two).

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/92585/Snaaty_AD-1700.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Galileo44]

And through the end:

Spoiler :

I kept up the peaceful teching, and my GNP skyrocketed as you will see from the screenshot. I got one main production cities and had 2 more secondary cities. No more wars on my continenet, but Brennus ate most of Wang Kon and Vasselized him too. Long story short, easy win in 1872, the AI were 20-30 turns back. The most irritating thing was that one of Peter's cities stole 3 floodplains towns and a grassland town from my #2 science city in the 1840s by culture. What did he proceed to do? He watermilled over them. I was getting an average of 200 beakers per turn per city by the end, as I had several cities working 7-12 towns. The aztec cities as a whole were production starved, so while they got towns, some of them didn't have enough hammers to get universities, observatories, and labs.

Game end:

GNP:

As you can see, I had a similar graph to Aelf in his IMC once democracy came in.


34454 Normalized Score

My first Immortal Victory, and the current highest score in my HOF for a Peaceful Victory Condition. I do feel a little cheating as it was an amazing start, but I didn't actually cheat, so I am surprised by my performance. I thought that an immortal win would be much harder and demand more war and MM.

 

[Winston Hughes]

I'm out.

Spoiler :

I didn't actually die (in fact I was beating down Peter when I quit), but my economy was in tatters after a thorough pillaging of my southern cities, whilst Brennus and Genghis have become far too powerful for me to compete with.

I could've carried on, but I've now got a huge stack of work to do, and getting a good thrashing at the hands of the AI is too depressing a way to spend my precious free time.

I'm clearly not yet good enough to handle immortal, although participating in this challenge has taught me a lot. In particular: I can now see why lightbulbing is valued so much on the higher levels; lilnev's point about the GW-Pyramids gambit was an eye-opener; I now understand the benefits of Snaaty's 'move inland' start a bit better; 'grow to size five before settler spamming' was something I hadn't considered before; and 'get at least 6 cities before liberalism' looks like a good rule of thumb.

I'll definitely join in another of these games if I can find the time. Given the importance of diplomacy at higher levels, and the relative difficulty of winning that kind of victory, would you consider trying a non-backdoor diplomatic challenge? I don't know how you'd set up such a challenge (maximum of eight cities?), but it would be really interesting to see how experienced players handle a game where the usual space/domination/culture strategies don't apply.

 

[shyuhe]

The high level diplomacy challenge is the current major (if it's still running - haven't looked). It's a deity diplomacy victory, and most players are running OCC and using SE to bulb their way to MM, followed by GE and chops to rush the UN. I haven't tried myself but if you can avoid early wars, I think it shouldn't be too hard to do (if you get your pick of civs, of course). If you had to do a non-backdoor diplomacy victory with Monty, Alex, and Toku as your neighbors.... things would be interesting.

 

[jamuraa]

I'm afraid you won't be seeing any more of my saves for this open game, even though it was fun to try to play at such a high level, unfortunately most of my work past 1000 has been hitting the enter button and trying desperately to get my 6th city. I may play it later, but I don't really have time as of now. Hopefully you won't miss my lackluster performance

 

[Snaaty]

@ Galileo44:

Congratz then

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@ jamuraa & Winston Hughes:

No problem, maybe next time (btw. the time thing is why I pref space-race over domination... ...I also haven´t that much time and a space-race game normally takes me 3-4 hours to finish... ...dom is something 10+ hours)

 

[Giaur]

I have Duron 700 and 512MB RAM, so my games last twice as long.

 

[Mutineer]

WEll, I launch 1918 I think, but was able to do it mach early. I was mostly fulling around, build all later wanders, all electricity/radio/mass media/3 gorges/elevator/internet, did 5 golden agess, running pacifism all rest of turns.

Just press enter.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/84898/Snaaty_AD-1918.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Galileo44]

Yeah, my computer is crappy too, that's why it has all the weird blue bars on the main screen where text and pictures should be.

 

[Giaur]

Nothing special. There won't be the report this time. I have not enjoyed the game too much.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Yeah, my computer is crappy too, that's why it has all the weird blue bars on the main screen where text and pictures should be.

Is this the challenge for people with crappy computers? Mine's useless too; it crashes if I leave the wonder movies or unit animations turned on. And don't even think about going into globe view unless you've got a spare half-hour to waste. That said, it's got nothing on the Babbage Engine I use at college; that takes five minutes just to show the screenshots on these forums, and even when they finally show up they're all blurred and darkly psychedelic.

Back OT, any ideas on the next challenge, Snaaty? I agree on the time issue, but we can't just play space-race again, can we? As I mentioned above, a diplomatic challenge would be interesting if you set the right constraints.

How about choosing 3 or 4 warmongers as opponents (and leaving the other spots random), pangea, no vassals, and a maximum of 8 cities? A requirement to build Mt. Rushmore and the Apollo Program before calling the victory vote could prevent the pure Mass Media beeline and help to keep things tense in the late game.

I reckon that would leave us a lot of different strategies to choose from, whilst keeping the focus on careful manipulation of the AI civs. The warmongers amongst us would still be able to satisfy their bloodlust, whilst the builders could play more peacefully. Plus, it need not be as time consuming as a domination challenge, or as 'sit back and repeatedly press enter' as a cultural one. Any thoughts?

 

[lilnev]

Sorry for the delay, but I've been fighting a lot.

1000 AD to 1700 AD:

Spoiler :

1000 AD. The war grinds on. Liberalism-Nationalism, though I wonder if I should have taken Gunpowder instead. I'm still fighting with catapults/longbows. Eventually my allies bow out. I give Monty Optics for peace so I can finally mine the Iron. It's been just on my side of the culture border, but I haven't had anything that can stand in the open against a horse archer, much less a maceman. No metal sucks.

1260 AD. Military tradition. I don't have stockpiled horse archers, so I'll have to build cavalry from scratch. But at least I can start. I'm ahead of everyone locally. Wang Kon has some good techs (Constitution and Econ). Brennus is the score leader, though not too bright. By accident, I circumnavigate. Trading for the right set of maps.

All my secondary cities have spawned their great people (most recently a GA from the HE city. I've spoken my venom for GAs before. Put him to sleep, for a late game golden age). So I try to turn off specialists in all but my capital (GP farm). I wish the city governor had a "do not assign specialists" button. As it is, I have to survey my empire each turn, and manually unassign the inevitable specialist in each city that has grown.

Once I've got a few cavalry, I bribe Ghengis back into war with Monty, then attack myself.

The 1400s are good to me; I core out 5 cities from the heart of Monty's empire. Before I can finish the job, he vassalizes himself to Ghengis. Well, at least that GA has something worth doing now. Culture bomb to push borders. Brennus is taking over the other continent. His tech isn't particularly good, however. I tech to Democracy and turn Monty's lands into suburbia. Then Scientific Method (turns off GL, oh well) and Physics.

A few turns later, Peter commits suicide by declaring on Ghengis/Monty. Um, Peter? You have muskets and he has cavalry. I've got a dozen cavalry myself that I didn't get full use of last time, so I jump into the war, quickly taking a couple of large cities. Start the Globe-draft:

Unfortunately I don't have Rifling, and can't get it for a reasonable price (just Physics, on which I have a monopoly). I become worried that Peter will vassalize himself to Ghengis, so I bribe Ghengis into peace. Immediately, Peter gets rifles and it's tough again. I try to slog onwards, but his increasing stacks of rifles and grenadiers and too intimidating for my 13 cavalry, and I don't have the seige engine support to bring to bear. How can he put out this many units with just 3 cities? 'Tis a mystery.

I build the SoL with the help of that long-sleeping GE. Sue for peace to get my economy back online. I've been running barely above 0% for a while now due to new cities and unit expenses. I've got the cottages in place, so I switch to Emancipation + Free Speech. Time to cruise to victory. I'm still in Rep-Merc-OR for now. US-SP-Free Religion are the probable endgame civics, but until the cottages grow up I still need those

1700 AD. Growth phase. Tech-wise, I'm about one back of the leaders (Hattie and Wang) who have Steel; though I'm almost to Assembly Line. Another GE awaits the Space Elevator. My GNP is recovering, and should soon go through the roof:

Here's the map:

Should be pretty straightforward from here out.

peace,
lilnev