Adreno's Storycorner [ NQ ]

[Adreno]

I'll dedicate this thread to my adventures in the land of NQ MP FFAs. I think full diplomacy free-for-alls with experienced players make the most intricate civ games ever - actually, make that the most intricate games of all strategy games ever. No Quitters is an open group for anyone, for more info: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/NO_QUITTERS

I'll start with a story of grand plans that crumbled...

6-player fractal (barbs on, ruins on). We always play random civs and I was more than happy to get Spain. It's the most overpowered civ in G&K. If you scout wonders early you can buy several settlers before other players even get their first (Spain gets +500g for discovering a wonder first, +100g otherwise, and natural wonders within borders provide double yield!). Take the worker from liberty first and steal a worker from CS to connect some luxuries to allow growth. Not only do you get that crucial early game growth faster than anyone else, you also get to claim the best city spots. Or at least that's how I thought this game would go...



Check the full screenshot if you're going to read further: http://koti.mbnet.fi/adreno/inlake.jpg

I wanted to settle Madrid next to the mountain to get observatory, but since the map was fractal, there was a good chance it would turn out to be continents (rather than single land mass where naval access isn't as crucial). It would also take longer to connect the pearls if I couldn't build a workboat from my capital. So settling on the coast was a no brainer, yet it would come to haunt me later.

My build order was 2 scouts, monument, archer. I usually build the monument faster so I can get the liberty worker and settler fast, but as spain getting to those wonders was the top priority. If I did I could buy anything I want long before I would get those policies. I sent the warrior and 2 scouts in different directions and to my horror eventually realized I was on a 4-player continent with no natural wonders. The continent with 2 players got all the wonders! Now my overpowered unique ability would be wasted and on top of that, I would get the crucial liberty policies later because I built 2 scouts before the monument.

I got some money from ruins and extorted some more from a CS (stole their worker after taking their money, like a baws). As soon as I had the 370g for a settler I bought it and had a tough decision which way to go. The lands around my capital were poor so I decided to risk it and race for the river incense near Moscow. I knew I would declare war by settling it. I didn't recognize the Russian player so I thought I would be able to take him or even maintain peace. If not, the alternative was essentially losing since I only had room for 1 more good city in uncontested lands.

Soon after I settled Barcelona the Russian player settled 2 cities and declared war on me. My cap was pumping archers but I had a ton of barbs coming at me from different directions. I realized he would be able to capture Barcelona before my archers would reach it. I didn't think I would be able to win from this start, but this is NQ, so you make due with what you got: I acknowledged settling on his lands was a mistake and offered the city in exchange for peace. Something I've never done before. From my perspective I was going to lose the city anyway. This way I would at least gain some goodwill.

I settled my liberty settler on Seville: river, 2 unique lux, sheep and horses. But more importantly, on a tile that connects the Madrid lake to the great ocean. I would be able to pump ships from Madrid, hide them in the lake, and attack through Seville! Or so I thought...

As the game progressed the Byzantines on our continent took over Persia. Russia was a point leader for a long time with his massive expansion and great lands. I took a mercantile CS at the upper left of the screenshot for gold and porcelain. I had 7 super Petra tiles around my cap so I built it as a priority and soon Madrid was a real powerhouse. Petra is definitely my favorite G&K addition to the game: one of few situational wonders that are really powerful on the right terrain but otherwise useless. Before renaissance all my desert hills were producing +1food+4hammers+1gold.

Next I started fabricating plans to take over Byzantines via sea. I haven't used Conquistadors before but they seem impressive for this purpose: embarkation with defense (double strength) and no penalty for attacking cities. I intended to use Privateers and Frigattes as my main force, and support with tercios, xbows, and conquistadors. I took the great admiral from Commerce tree and was looking forward to my first real naval war in G&K.

After teching Frigattes I was dumbstruck: I wasn't able to build them from Madrid! The lake in the screenshot has only coast tiles, no ocean, and apparently in G&K you can't build naval units without a direct connection to the ocean! If I had known I would have settled Madrid next to the mountain for the observatory. Since my cap was huge it would have meant like +30% science empire wide. Now I had no navy and no science. Not exactly what you want in a continental map...

This game was becoming a real trainwreck. I was already last in points and now I would have to use land units as my main force and naval units (from Seville) as support since I couldn't build enough of them. I wasn't sure how much navy the Byzantines had, if they had more than me I would be crushed. But it was a gamble I had to take, being the last in points with only 2 good cities and crap land around me.

The Byzantine capital was vulnerably on the coast. I landed north of it with conquistadors, tercios, 2 cannons, 1 xbow and a general. The admiral and Frigattes wiped out his fleet and bombarded his coastal land units. Privateers turned out to be much weaker than I expected. After capturing the capital I discovered that in G&K you can't attack with a melee unit from inside the city if there is also a naval unit resting in the city. Another bug I wasn't aware of. He had a bunch of xbows bombarding the city and only a single melee unit ready to capture it. I had the GW to slow him down but it was a surprise to me I wouldn't be able to attack from the city, and that cost me. He recaptured, and after I took it back it was nearly pop 1 with no buildings besides a few wonders.

Soon after, the Russians started moving on old Persia (now controlled by the AI since the Byzantine player left after losing his capital the second time). On the other continent Inca were wiping out the Netherlands with an impressive tech lead. United by a common foe, I sat down with Russia to negotiate again. We made a pact that neither of us would take the remaining Byzantine cities and we would work together to catch up on the Inca. We did, hopeless as it was. 10% tech lead, massive land, massive navy, massive manufacturing. Carls, as Inca, built the space ship; making it the first science victory I've seen in MP in 1100 hours of playing.

Edit: As a curious detail, after I traded Russia the city, I had too many workers, so I offered to trade him one in exchange for a favor in the future. Later in the game when I was about to go under 0 happiness he repaid the favor by giving me lux. We didn't have the tech available for open borders (which is neccessary for gifting units) so I let him take the worker by declaring war again. After this we stayed in pretend-war for a long time to mislead the other players on how we are doing. Wars are typicly crippling so when 2 civs are at war you don't view them as so much of a threat.

 

[Heerlo]

Nice story.

 

[Velvell]

Subscribed.

 

[Adreno]

Nice cap, eh? Got rolled Ethiopia in a 6p pang and decided to go for a cultural victory with a 2-city build due to terrain and civ. I've never actually seen a culture vic in MP, so it's not the best choice, I know. Just keeps the game interesting when you try different strategies, and maybe we will see some cultural victories in G&K now that bomb shelters can protect from nukes!

I didn't realize having a ton of 2f tiles with no 4f tiles would be such a drag on growth. I really should have gone for the hanging gardens. I had nice growth early on but once the city got around pop 12 it was taking ~8 turns to grow with aqueduct. When it was pop 16 and I was working specialists it was stagnating :/ Those holy sites in the pic were a drag on growth, too.

I saved all jungles for universities, built forts over bananas and trading posts over everything else. Due to Ethiopian monuments (+2faith+2culture) I managed to get the +1 culture from jungles pantheon and was also the first to get a full religion. I took +20% combat strength around friendly cities with my religion and +8 culture from Hermitage. With all the culture multipliers I was doing +210 culture on turn 130. Later when we scrapped the game I was doing +300 per turn and was close to completing 4 policy trees (I was saving the liberty happiness finisher to endgame to get a GP when they are really expensive. If you take the liberty GP in early game it will delay all your future GP.)

My borders were wide and every tile cities didn't work had a fort. The nice thing about forts in your borders is they provide the defense bonus to friendly units only. So with the forts, Himeji castle, Ethiopian city bonus and the religion bonus, my cannon fodder units would have +100% combat strength without fortifying. Don't know if that helps at all against nukes and bombers tho

Despite going piety I was #1 in tech for a long time (thanks, observatory). I'm confident I would have made bomb shelters before being nuked, after that and cristo redentor tech wouldn't really matter to me. I saved the game and might play it through against the AI just to see when I could have built the utopia project.

 

[Adreno]

Worst start I have ever seen... Look, 1 hammer in my cap tiles!



That was on Large Islands. 3 players got their own islands and 3 started on mine. These map generators seem to be inherently broken. Only Pangaea seems to produce balanced maps. You get a horrible start on Pang you just move your settler a few times. And you always have room for at least 2 cities. Europe seems to resync on turn 1 every time and someone's capital always moves after the resync. Shuffle produces the most unplayable random crap ever and fractal... well fractal is exciting. But Pang is the place $0.02 be.

 

[Adreno]

I've had some really tough decisions with the liberty finisher in G&K. In vanilla civ you would want to get it as soon as possible, take GE, rush HS, take another free engineer, and spend it on porcelain/notre dame which were both on education. I'm glad they changed the tech tree cos that was a really overpowered strategy.

Now all "free" great persons from social policies increase the cost for the next GP so I've sometimes left the liberty tree incomplete. I rather take the free great person when they are really expensive: in the endgame. Sometimes you can't wait tho, like today I really needed the happiness bonus from liberty and had to complete the tree.

The game was 6p FFA continents, I was killing Rome and the other 4 players were on their own continent. I could have taken the scientist for an academy, but you get way more beakers from using a scientist in late game, and I was going to have my own island so staying ahead of tech midway through the game wasn't important.

The artist, merchant, engineer and scientist are in the same "pool" when it comes to increasing cost. Since I wasn't really desperate for anything specific, I wanted to take a GP outside that pool to make sure I get the max amount of scientists for late game. I could have taken an admiral, but I had only 1 naval city so I wouldn't have a big fleet in any case. I could have taken a prophet, but I had 2 faith wonders in my territory so I was gonna generate a lot of prophets anyway (was doing +100faith/turn for the latter half of the game).

I went for a more creative solution: a great general... not for the war, I was gonna conquer Rome without it. I used the general to steal lux from a CS. +4 happiness for the rest of the game, +tradeable lux with the bazaar, no gpt upkeep from holding a GP, and I only increased the cost for the next general.



As an interesting sidenote, Maya were 10% ahead of me in tech in early game, but 20% behind me when the game was over. The +2 science from Pyramids is really sick in early game but not that much later on. And the way the Mayan calendar works, you get a lot of GP in early game. They increase the cost for future GP, and you have to pick a different GP every time. So overall you end up with fewer scientists over the lifespan of the game. If you want a simple strategy to win the game as Maya, here it is: stay in peace, tech artillery, attack the biggest threat. You get so much more science than everybody else in early game that you really should get to arty before anyone else, and if you don't take that chance to win the game you will be run over in late game when the other players get 7 scientists and you get like 1.

 

[_invy_]

Interesting stories

 

[Adreno]

The twin towers of Babel



I love starts like these. Nothing to drool over, but definitely in the top 20% of starts (on pang, normal settings, 6p FFA). I love the combination of granary resources and production tiles, I love the rivers, and I especially love the fact that we have a decision to make on turn 0: Settle where we are for fast growth, or move on the silver next to the mountain, away from the wheats and the rivers?

I tried my luck with moving, and boy, did I feel vindicated after seeing 8 desert hills + one normal desert tile behind the mountain. By this point my strategic priorities in this game became obvious: I had some prime real estate around my capital, but it was all production so in order to grow into it I had to get Petra and Hanging Gardens. Besides growth, Petra would give me +9 production +9 gold +a free opera house (by extending the tradition free culture building policy over amphitheaters) + 6 culture after archaeology. Hanging Gardens would also give me Gardens in a city without a river under the base tile. Remember I was Egypt, with marble and sick production. I was going to have a wonder factory, and +25% great people generation means a lot when you have 20+ wonders.

But let's back up a bit...

Ruins were on, so I built the scout before the monument. I got a pop and some culture from ruins and I was trying to find city states as soon as possible to get gold to buy the wheat tiles. I was also hoping to luckbox into a religious CS early to get a free pantheon. After monument I went for granary, and the same turn the granary completed I got writing and a worker from liberty (I opened tradition before liberty tho).

HG+Petra would make or break this game for me so everything I did up to that point was to get 'em. I went for the GL, not only to get those techs faster, but also to slow other people from teching them. Based on demographics literacy, someone took writing 1 turn before me, and the next turn 4 people had writing! Why they wanted to race me when I was egypt, God only knows. But race we did.

I teched mining after writing and had my worker ready on a forest tile when it completed. Despite settling a turn late and not luckboxing into a free pantheon I still made my personal GL record at 22 turns (and only 2 chops). Calendar completed same turn as library, so I was able to bulb the national college. Next I was beelining the crucial HG/petra tree and building some mandatory stuff like a ranged unit and a shrine.

I took a golden age from liberty around the time I started to build the HG, and I cut down half a rain forest to make sure no-one gets it before me. After it completed I was pretty safe, considering Petra is much further down the tech tree and needs special terrain to work.

I made comments every now and then about my military strength to deter attackers. I would have been able to defend myself but wars are so crippling it would hurt my long-term game. My cap was starting to look nice... so nice that I'm in fact not working the river marble tile lol: http://koti.mbnet.fi/adreno/babel2.jpg

At this point I was able to build any wonder in 3-4 turns. Yes, you heard me. 3 or 4 turns for any wonder! +15% from a tradition policy, +5% from a liberty policy, +20% for being egypt, +15% for Marble. That stacks up to +55% on top of my amazing base production.

For my religion I took +1 faith from desert tiles, +2 faith from world wonder, Tithe and +34% conversion strength. The conversion strength is better than reach on a map like this where all cities are pretty much connected within 10 tiles of each other. The wonders were giving me so much, especially after I popped +2 culture per wonder from the freedom tree. I went from about +100 culture per turn to +165 with just that! (I think Hermitage etc multiplies it)

I made some wonders just for culture, faith and perks:

Angkor Wat
Great Mosque of Djenne
Himeji Castle
Machu Picchu
The Hagia Sophia
The Oracle
The Porcelain Tower

...And also some really nice ones:

Alhambra + Bradenburg Gate (20% culture + melee units in the city started with 3x rough terrain bonus + heal every turn bonus)
Chichen Itza + Taj Mahal combo
The Great Library
The Hanging Gardens
Petra
The Great Wall

While I enjoyed my position, I only had 2 cities. That amount of land means little chance of finding oil, aluminum or uranium. No oil means no bombers, no aluminum means no space victory, and no uranium means I can get nuked without fear of retaliation. I had basicly no shot of winning the game with my 2 cities. And I had to go to war before bomber era. That means artillery.

Behold, the Twin Towers of Babel: http://koti.mbnet.fi/adreno/babel3.jpg

Note how I keep units outside the 6hex surrounding cities to avoid spies. I could have teched artillery much faster, but I was generating so much gold I wanted to utilize that by mass upgrading a ton of cannons and muskets.

My target was Austria, who had captured city states, parts of Babylon, and parts of Arabia. By the time I went into war he had 160 manufacturing and I had 120. Difference was I had 2 cities that were only producing units while he had a ton of cities, many of them puppets. I was able to shell out about 1 cannon per turn and upgrade it to artillery. He would never be able to match my production no matter what the numbers say.

Before my war preps, while Austria still had the #1 military, I made a proposal to Ethiopia: "I attack Austria if you don't 2v1 me". Seems like a good deal for him to have the 2 superpowers fight each other. Only thing is I win the game when I can fight that war 1 on 1. Actually, it's still a good deal for him, because if he were to decline, I would simply make the same proposal to Austria, and then conquer Ethiopia instead. Using diplomacy like that seems a bit overkill in retrospect, but I suppose I wanted to secure my win there.

Stats from turn 148, after the great war: http://koti.mbnet.fi/adreno/babel4.jpg

 

[Tabarnak]

Played a game with sir_spam_a_lot yesterday and he played Austria pretty well. He married quite a lot of cs around him and became the most powerful civ when we reached the ren. era. Definitively a powerful civ if you get right land and to buy cs

Probably better than Spain in some cases.

Too bad i can't see pictures for now

 

[Adreno]

Too bad i can't see pictures for now

My webhost is usually good. Does someone else have trouble viewing the screenshots?

 

[Tabarnak]

That's ok for me right now. Love the last start with 2 wheats, marble and 2 silvers

 

[Heerlo]

Nice stories, and no I'm not having any trouble seeing the screenshots.

 

[Adreno]

Hippopotamus

6p pang FFA. I was excited to see Carthage cos I've never played a full game with it before. Carthage has a coastal start bias because they get a free harbor in all cities. My coast had no resources so I moved 2 tiles inland on a river hill next to a mountain. While there's many reasons to make this move, i'll list the top 3:

1) Observatory
2) Half of my cap tiles would be useless ocean tiles. I wouldn't be able to grow a big capital, or at least I wouldn't want to if I settled on that coast.
3) Inland capital is more defensible (especially with those mountains!)



When I saw my cap terrain I thought I might be able to race the GL (granary+wheat allows you to work the hills + i had 2 forests to chop). However my plans changed when my first warrior discovered Mt. Kailash 5 tiles south of Carthage. Since I had already moved my settler 2 tiles south, there was a high chance that spot would be contested. I had to get a settler out fast.

I didn't have any crucial techs to rush, so I went for the Great Library bluff That's when you beeline writing while checking the demographics each turn. If 4 turns after you discover it the average literacy is still 1%, no-one is racing you for it. And since everyone can see in demographics that someone beelined writing, they assume you are building it. That means no-one will start building it until like turn 27+, when it's starting to look like no-one is building it again. So I started building it on turn 22 and I didn't have to max production for it.

This allowed me to secure both the GL and Mt. Kailash. After settling on it I worked the +8 faith until I got my pantheon, then worked the oasis and wheat tiles for growth. When I was at 0 happiness I worked kailash again in order to synchronize growth with the capital (that's when you grow cities while the avoid growth box is checked, fill up the food surplus in all cities and allow cities to grow simultaneously, going from 0 happiness to -2)

Check out what the map looked like:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/adreno/hippopotamus.jpg

What should you think when you see terrain like this:
- There is tundra above Colombo, so the land continues only south of the Byzantines
- Super sweet spot for 2 cities with marble, crab and whales with some nice stables resources and hillls for production. As you can see in the screenshot, I was using my scout to block the passage to it. With scout on one side and barb camp on the other side of the mountain range, it would take a long time for the Byzantines to discover that spot. I built my 3rd city next to the crab and my 4th city next to the marble.
- Great city spot between Jakarta and Prague, but it was uncontested so I settled it last (5th)
- Another great spot between Constantinople and Utique. Normally I would settle contested spots fast, but here we have amazing terrain even without it. If we can avoid war by GIVING that spot to our neighbor, that's a better move. Just make sure they know u are giving it up, that buys a lot of good faith.

I was struggling for gold for a long time because my cap wasn't coastal. I could have connected trade routes so fast with the free harbors, now it took a while. After building my 5 cities I made some military and took over Colombo for 2 lux + coastal. I made sure my units were upgradeable so I could improve my strength by upgrades during the university-garden-workshop-observatory building phase of the game (I think I teched observatories before workshops). I saved barely enough gold for artillery upgrades. Without Tithe I would have been disbanding units.

1 turn before I popped renaissance I renamed all my cities. Can you guess why?



If you said I had a hippo fetish, no points to you. If you said I wanted enemy spies to lounge around in my 5th city that was producing no science, give yourself a pat on the back. I was leading tech by about 10% with 2 academies in my capital + NC + observatory + uni. I was saving oxford for a science vic. I saved all scientists after that and kept them out of spy sight.

While I was building, everyone else was fighting. Mongolia eventually killed the Mayans and the British cities were divided between the Byzantines and the Greeks. I was so lucky. Not only did I get amazing terrain, avoid early wars, and have everyone else fighting, I was also able to build the Oracle after Renaissance! That means I got a free social policy into the rationalism tree!

I beelined artillery, had 4 cannons ready to upgrade, cannon fodder units ready to protect artillery, workers ready to build roads and a quinquereme positioned near Constantinople. I even moved a spy into Constantinople 3 turns before my attack. I perfected war preps so it was sad I blundered the actual attack. I had 3 artillery in range of Constantinople and I was wastefully killing his units instead of the city. A few turns and 3 citadels later I realized: wait, I can capture the city with the boat. Then I took the city from full health to 0 in a single turn and took it.

I took some more puppets as buffer towns and after the war it was just me and Greece left. Greece had gone down the Commercial tree so I had to mentally brace myself to lose all my coastal cities. I put all my firepower in the whales/crab city and I wasn't going to defend any of the puppets. If push came to shove I would be able to take a science vic with my core 4 cities.

I beelined Industrialization and a few turns before connecting coal I popped the order policy that allows you to build factories twice as fast and yields +25% science to cities from factories. After that I intended to complete the rationalism tree, but I was doing too much culture. In fact I had to slow down to make sure I can spend the 2 free techs on expensive apollo techs.

Greece was somewhat ahead of me in production, but I was building air repair bombers and I managed to get 1 battleship inside a city to defend against his frigatte army. When he realized my cap wasn't coastal we called game. In the end I was doing 785 science while greece was doing 280. Plus I had 4 scientists saved AND I hadn't built oxford AND I had 2 free techs coming from rationalism AND I had 500 faith +36 per turn. I had only spent faith on 2 engineers so I would eventually be able to buy 2 scientists for 670 and 1000. I could also build Hubble for 2 extra scientists way way way before he could tech it.

I would have probably made a personal spaceship record if we had played through