>3 Gold Start

[leif erikson]

I'm not necessarily taking a contrary view, just found it interesting that in that game the top 2 out of 3 positions were taken by Diplo victory. In playing that game, our team did not consider this a real possibility.

Reading the threads associated with those victories, they earned them. Team Smurkz charts and tables for that game are an education in diplo game mechanics.

 

[Seraiel]

Just curious how long it takes for the AI to move. One of the reasons I don't play large maps is because the turns take so long especially in the late game. Maybe my computer isn't fast enough.

As for Huge map vs Normal map. I tend to play them the same way with the same strategies. It usually works. I just build more cities, cap a few to ensure my dominance in land area and pop and I can usually win. The map size doesn't make it that different for me, the speed does. Quick games are insanely hard to win on Diety.

Did you notice that nobody actually asked for that this time and that you've told this in various threads over the last weak at least 10 times?

Turn 1 took 5 minutes for all the AI to move.

What kind of comp do you have?

A laptop with 6 GB of RAM.

I think you might wanna recheck your laptop. Mine is 3y old, has 4 gig of ram but was a gaming laptop then having 2 geforce 8800 gtx and it takes about 15-20s on turn 1 and after that never longer then 10s.

Haha!

Busted!

I think you understood something wrong obsolete, Mari didn't use worldbuilder, leif erikson did. 17 opponents are regular maximum for huge maps by HoF rules.

I know Victoria was a bit weighty, but counting her for two...

Ment Viccy and Lizzy

 

[leif erikson]

Haha!

Busted!

You really should explain yourself more. Comments such as these are not helpful in furthering the discussion.

I think you understood something wrong obsolete, Mari didn't use worldbuilder, leif erikson did. 17 opponents are regular maximum for huge maps by HoF rules.

I only used WorldBuilder to see how the game was set up, making no changes to the game.

Sorry, I think you are missing the point. In setting up a Huge/Marathon game, the custom game option would give you 10 opponents. Increasing that to 17 crowds the ai and makes the game a bit easier for the human player by slowing the development of the ai.

I understand why MarigoldRan added the additional ai, due to standard HoF rules, which is fine. However, the result of doing this should still be stated and be clear for the discussion to move ahead.

 

[Seraiel]

I only used WorldBuilder to see how the game was set up, making no changes to the game.

Sorry, I think you are missing the point. In setting up a Huge/Marathon game, the custom game option would give you 10 opponents. Increasing that to 17 crowds the ai and makes the game a bit easier for the human player by slowing the development of the ai.

I understand why MarigoldRan added the additional ai, due to standard HoF rules, which is fine. However, the result of doing this should still be stated and be clear for the discussion to move ahead.

I don't miss the point Erik I knew you were only using WorldBuilder to look at the setup of the game. Anyhow, 17 opponents are imho somewhat "standart" for early Domination games, as, as you say, AI cannot grab as much land, slowing down their military developement, making it easier to conquer the smaller AI's having less troops, and, with rushes, it's also easier, because the AI's sit closer to oneself so maintenance is lower and land is usually completely settled by 500-1000 BC, so one has to build no settlers exept a few for the early setup. Just look at the Huge / Marathon / Domination games, they're all against 17 Civs and even the "Guide to 500k scores" suggests that. If one would play against only 10 AI's, they all would have more troops, and one still had to build Settlers to settle the space left inbetween.

 

[leif erikson]

I kind of ended up involved in this because there seemed to be a heated discussion concerning the difficulty or ease of Huge/Marathon versus other settings at Deity level of difficulty. What this means is that the settings used within that, the number of AI, the map type, the sea level and others, have an effect upon the way the game plays out. In fact, it would seem to me that this would make things nearly incomparable in terms of relative ease or difficulty of playing through a particular save, never mind trying to compare the relative ease or difficulty using small map sizes or different game speeds.

My conclusion is that there is really no need to have such a heated discussion. We should all recognize, and appreciate, that the depth of Civ4, as a game, provides for many options and paths to victory (or defeat?) and that it is very difficult to make comparisons between those various options in general terms, never mind argue and have flame wars about them.

My purpose is to ensure civil discussion in our forums. My hope is that recognition of the facts above would help us to think a bit more about how difficult comparisons are and approach such a topic knowing what our biases are for our favorite settings and realizing that others probably have different favorites and may be just as passionate about them.

 

[MarigoldRan]

I took a look at the game Mari, and found that you picked some very unusual Oponents that make the game significantly harder than it could be imho. For example you picked Charles and Sitting Bull, which are both Protective, making their Archers or even LBs and XBows much stronger, then you have Industrial Civs in it like Ramesses, Financial Civs like Wilhelm (being Creative too, worst Combo imho!) and Wang Kong (being also Protective *uargh*) and you got the full scale of Top-Warmongers like Monty, the Greeks, the Mongolians a. s. o. And where the heck is Mansa? How are you supposed to get techs by trade if the Romans get -1 to -2 on relations from the start and him being not there?

I think your next game would be A LOT easier if you picked these opponents:

• Asoka, Ghandi, Justinian (peaceful Religion developers, no trouble from them, easy to conquer)
• Cyrus, Frederick, Elizabeth, Joao, Lincoln, Mehmed, Napoleon, Suleiman, Catherine, Peter, Washington, Victoria, Sulei, Zara Yaqob (all not real Warmongers and more peaceful, especially the Americans have been extremely weak in all of my games, Cathy and Sulei can be a threat but they're still far better then Alex or Monty)
• Brennus, Isabella, Hatty (Religion developers that can easily be bribed to war against another Civ, make them your friends)
• Take one Extortionist, bestly Genghis (as he's IMP so his cities will give many GG's when conquered) and you will wonder what will happen in Diplomacy (EVERYBODY is gonna hate him more than you, cannot get better, and you got someone you can easily bribe in addition)
• And of course Mansa Musa, you need that tech-trade-whore!

This is a handpicked list of the imho weakest AI's against the Romans who can't found a Religion, you will have no PRO, you won't have IND either (makes getting Wonders and Failgold even easier), you have few CRE (so don't worry about ) and you will have a hate-target for everyone that can even save your ass when bribing him against someone who wants to DoW you!

Think about those.

Greetz, Sera

P.S.: As you can only take 17 opponents for HoF I would leave out Cathy, Zara and Hatty for being CRE or Sulei, Victoria and Victoria for being strong.

It was random AIs, so yeah. PRO's not bad. AGG though can be a problem. And the Native Americans are a definite no-no, which is why I stayed away from Wilhelm (since he bordered the NAs). So yeah, in the future I'd probably pick the AIs. It's an important part.

I spawn-busted with woodsman warriors and had axes, so barbs were never much of an issue for me. The crowded map really helps. By the time large number of barbs started appearing, I was producing praets, so all the barbs sluiced over to attack the Dutch. It's one of the advantages of the IW-BW beeline.

The barbs select which target to go after based on relative military strength. If you can raise your military high enough at this point, it shouldn't be an issue.

And finally: it's standard policy to add in more civs to the map for HoF Domination.

 

[MarigoldRan]

I kind of ended up involved in this because there seemed to be a heated discussion concerning the difficulty or ease of Huge/Marathon versus other settings at Deity level of difficulty. What this means is that the settings used within that, the number of AI, the map type, the sea level and others, have an effect upon the way the game plays out. In fact, it would seem to me that this would make things nearly incomparable in terms of relative ease or difficulty of playing through a particular save, never mind trying to compare the relative ease or difficulty using small map sizes or different game speeds.

My conclusion is that there is really no need to have such a heated discussion. We should all recognize, and appreciate, that the depth of Civ4, as a game, provides for many options and paths to victory (or defeat?) and that it is very difficult to make comparisons between those various options in general terms, never mind argue and have flame wars about them.

My purpose is to ensure civil discussion in our forums. My hope is that recognition of the facts above would help us to think a bit more about how difficult comparisons are and approach such a topic knowing what our biases are for our favorite settings and realizing that others probably have different favorites and may be just as passionate about them.

Your first paragraph is very fair. This map is not representative of standard Marathon/Huge Deity games for obvious reasons: 5 gold start, Romans, crowded map.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

@Seraiel I was over exaggerating , but it seemed like forever for the AI to do everything on turn 1. It didn't help that it took like 30 turns to get a tech, and another 10 turns for my worker to do anything. I'm to used to normal speed I guess.

 

[MarigoldRan]

1.08 million score. About 200 AD Domination.

Er, built a total of 4 libraries and 2 forums, and five forges.

Otherwise it was praets, and later trebs and catas. Built over 200. Ended with about 100.

Until rifling, large numbers of these things are hard to stop.

Perhaps I will turn barbs off in the future. The advantages of getting woodsman II warriors is balanced by the disadvantages of having to build axes and warriors to deal with barbs. Steal less, build more workers.

 

[Giant Wolfman]

I would be interested to see how 290 axes or 200 horse archers (same hammer total as your 226 praets) would do on this map

 

[MarigoldRan]

I would be interested to see how 290 axes or 200 horse archers (same hammer total as your 226 praets) would do on this map

Once Feudalism and Machinery kicks in....

The thing is that catapults only do so much collateral damage. Once the catapults are done, you need something strong enough to kill the damaged mace or xbow in the city.

I think I built a total of 90 or so siege weapons, the majority being catapults.