Advanced Civ Play-Along Game

I just had a look at your Turn 429 spoiler, Jorunkun, as that is pretty close to my turn number (439). How come I am circa 1300 AD while you are circa 700 AD? Surely 10 extra turns cannot advance the calendar year by that much. Is the calendar year dynamic with respect to tech progress or anything, f1rpo?
 
Played some more but will need to take a break for work for the rest of today. It's going well tho.

Spoiler The Great Viking War :

Ragnar finally got his Berserkers, and Longbowmen so my army bulding phase took a good deal longer than I'd wished. Ragnar declared on the Khan, but neither side was able to do much and they came to peace a few turns later.

I built up the SE isles, razing the barb city and founding two of my own in adjacent spots. One of my war goals against Ranar was to take his settlements on the isles so some units had to be ferried south, further delaying my attack. I also noticed Caesar massign some troops at my northern border.

I teched to guilds, optics, paper and education, which I boosted with my first great scientist. Also spent a lot of worker turns on irrigation projects, to boost my coastal cities. I finally have the National Epic set up and expect to see more GPs soon. Which is necessary, because an unknown civ hit liberalism and is thus probably ahead in tech. On our continent, Boudicaa and Joao are about par with me - the latter circumnavigated in the 1400s.

This is the empire in 1490, a few turns before I declared on Ragnar.

My war aims were to take Bjorgvin to cut his lands in half, so my main stack was in Nidaros. After that, they were to go south west to take Medina, then Baghdad. I had smaller stacks in the northern cities next to his capital, where his main body of troops was massed. On the isles, I planned to take Roskilde, then Tonsberg; had two galleys stationed there to make it quick. In short, I wanted Ragnar gone, and easy to secure borders with the Arabs and the Khan.

588prewarempire0000.JPG


Here is how it played out:

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Bjorgvin, Medina and the Isles fell easily, but Saladin declared on Ragnar and snatched back Baghdad before I could get to it. I took some 10 turns to capture Haithabu, Ragnar's new capital, which had a castle and a hefty garrison - but a liberal application of trebuchets put an end to them. Ragnar still lives though - he founded Sigtuna, see nw corner. Sued for peace anyway - he's Joao's problem now.

So, I'm in the late middle ages and sitting pretty. Need to think about what to do next. Saladin is pleased and no threat, the Khan annoyed but in no position to attack successfully either. Rome is a possible threat, but as long as it's just one party attacking, I can take it. I'll probably spend a few dozen turns buffing all my coastal garrison to two defenders but mainly focus on tech / economy and getting my newly conquered and founded cities up to scratch, so I can switch into Serfdom and possibly Nationalism. I might try to convert Caesar to Buddhism, with a missionary offensive.

The big x factor IMO is who is on the other continent(s) - I need to send out some caravels, now that the southern ocean is no longer contested. Not sure what to do about astronomy. I'd like to bypass it for more enlightened economy and science boosters, but I've repeatedly had oversea rivals send pillaging privateers whom I couldn't counter and who wreaked absolute havoc with my coastal cities. Excited to see what the wider world looks like and what the big picture for the end game will be like - one of the big plus points of huge, spacious maps is that the game becomes progressively larger and the goalpoasts shift a lot.

Btw, thanks all for playing along, posting and reading this. I'm having a blast reading your write-ups and comparing strategies - so many questions. I've noticed my settlement pattern is rather dense, comparatively - not sure what the ups and downs are here. I'm also curious to see how much of a threat Ragnar turns out to be in your games. He's kept me on my toes many a century - had I not checked him early, I reckon he might well have dominated the continent by the middle ages.

 
I just had a look at your Turn 429 spoiler, Jorunkun, as that is pretty close to my turn number (439). How come I am circa 1300 AD while you are circa 700 AD? Surely 10 extra turns cannot advance the calendar year by that much. Is the calendar year dynamic with respect to tech progress or anything, f1rpo?
Not sure myself ...
 
Done with work and back to the Empire. :)

Spoiler The Big Picture :

Played peaceful builder for a while, double garrisoning my coastal cities, missionizing the Romans and exploring the world. Also managed to settle the two remainig spots on the SW Isles; this chunk of land is now firmly under my control, save for one city that Boudica grabbed.

I met Cyrus on turn 622, Zara on 625 and finally Hanibal shortly after. Had some cash left over and engaged in some map trading, which ultimately netted me 1600 in cash and a pretty full view of the wider world. Here it is:

648maptradereveal0000.JPG

My read of the map is that, since each of the overseas guys are on their own island, none of them will be strong enough to dominate the other ... or me. They all have galleons though, so I will stay on the lookout for sneak attacks and keep a reactive force to hand. Generally, the biggest threat is an attack by Julius and the Khan, and/or any other party. I don't think I'll go on the attack until I have cannon and riflemen - everyone has military tech parity right now, too much of a meat-grinder.

Tech-wise I went for Economics and got there first; the resulting great merchant went toward lightbulbing printig press. I switched into free market, otherwise still in slavery and organised religion. With all the budding cities, I just can't let go of the whip just yet ...

After a quick 5 turn detour for philosophy I am now putting all my efforts toward Astronomy - running at 60% science and -22. Saw a privateer a few turns ago and really don't want that hassle.

Lastly, Caesar is giving me grief. He's at 90% my strength and keeps building up forces along my border. I'd rather not fight him now - but if he attacks, I'll come at his coastal cities with my soon-to-be-built Frigates and stay on the defense along the land border. But religion my yet calm his mind ...


648Romansituation0000.JPG


 
According to the Excel sheet that I used for updating the years-per-turn progression (when I reduced the turn limit from 1500 to 1250), t439 --> ad1270 and t429 --> ad1220 should be correct, whereas t429 --> ad695 would be correct in AdvCiv 1.06. (The revised progression was already in place in the 1.07 release candidate.) Looks like Jorunkun uses 1.06 then. [Edit: Looking just at the first spoiler, 48 turns for Fishing and BW is also consistent with 1.06; took me 38 turns in a test with 1.07.] Well, at least we've all started from the same savegame, and the changes in 1.07 are pretty much just speed scaling, incl. Barbarians, tweaks to Barbarians placed on Galleys – and tweaks to PerfectMongoose, but, given how much variance there is with that script, I might not be able to tell the difference just from looking at (the entirety of) our map. Updating at this point would only matter for the scaling changes, and I think it would mess things up a bit, e.g. by increasing the game year (which then won't match the tech progress) and decreasing the end turn (despite hundreds of turns already played at a slower tech pace).
 
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Bummer. Don't understand how that could have happened - I know I have downloaded and was sure I had installed 1.07.

I will keep playing 1.06 - at least we'll see how the two versions compare then, I guess.

Also, I think I'm on the home stretch for my game. Uncovered the whole world, got the biggest civ, leading in GDP and a few turn away from rifling. I'll decide tomorrow whether to raid one or two more neighbors or just ride this out for a space victory.
 
Under file properties of the DLL, "Details" tab, the file version string should say whether it's 1.06 or 1.07. Congrats anyway, sounds like you're winning handily.
I've only played until finishing Meditation (the tech :)) today; that worked out as planned. Will get a bigger chunk in tomorrow or the day after I think.
 
So much winning ... :)

Spoiler The Great Wars :

Here's my GNP fever-chart. The other top three civs are still competitive militarily, some even ahead by one tech.

739gdp0000.JPG


I came in first for rifles and had a choice of attacking either Saladin (weakest) in the south, Khan in the east, or Caesar (strongest) in the north. Went after Khan, because I need more production-rich cities for the modern age. After naval bombardment from frigates, to which Khan had no counter, the main force of trebuchets, riflemen and knights marched in, taking every city and ending Khan's empire. Got the spiral minaret and a bunch of outdated wonders, and the site of my future capital and ironworks, Beshbalik, in the bargain.

704declareonkk0000.JPG


And because that went so well and Caesar kept his troops his side of the border, I then turned on Saladin, my old Buddhist ally, who has some big, cash-rich cities. I concerted a very neat four-pronged simultaneous attack on four cities (now with cannon and cavalry) and swiftly overran him. Big bonus is that he built Versailles, the "2nd forbidden palace" wonder, on the island city of basra. I'd been trying to flip it with culture as I switched to free speech after I had built up the main body of the army.

751declareonsaladin0000.JPG

Meanwhile, Joao had declared on Boudica and, in the last turns of my Arabian war, he asked me to join. And seeing this eyesore of a Celtic city - Venta - in the south eastern isles, I couldn't contain myself and loaded my galleons. Here is the empire after peace with Saladin (who had founded an exile colony in the isles north west of us), and massing forces for an invasion of the celtic lands west of Rome.

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And this is where I am picking up from today. I'd made peace with Boudica, who lost four or so cities along the northern frontier to Joao.

I'm kinda worried about Caesar, who has machine guns and is teching to infantry but is still fielding tons of middle age units. My newly acquired Celtic lands expose Rome's flanks but the three cities will be hard to supply if he comes after them. And I need to keep watching the old northern border. I could beat Caesar in a war, but it would cost my my entire army and possibly one or all of the Celtic cities. Would be very ugly.

My country is extremely war weary and many of my units are tied down with peacekeeping in all these newly won cities. I hope I can tech peacefully for a few turns until I have military parity. Fortunately I am am the first to combustion and will now spend many turns upgrading my navy.


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I hope I can finish today; though I am not sure how.

I reckon one would need to conquer the entire continent for domination. That means bulldozing Caesar and, sooner or later, attacking Joao. Both have coal and oil.

I think I'll try to cripple Caesar, take his southernmost five or six cities, make it impossible for him to attack me. I'll keep a strong garrison on this one land border and then tech to space race.

Watch this space.

 
The Thirty-Years-War

Spoiler When in Rome ... :


I spent all day battling Caesar. He'd declared on the very turn I got infantry and moved north on Cimmerian with a stack of almost 60 units, 1/6 cannon, 1/6 infantry ... the rest medieval clunkers.

I immediately blew his ships out of the water and bombarded and blocked every port he had - including Rome, with its Moais. I also sent out pillaging cavalry to starve and cut off Saricum and Circei, Even if Cimmerian would fall, I was sure to capture those two.

814Romedeclaresforcelticlands0000.JPG


But, as luck would have it, I had just spawned a great artist and sent him to the front, where ...

815GAedefense0000.JPG


... it arrived just in time. I also upgraded all my riflemen to infantry, burnt all my cannon on his stack and sent all troops in to a counterattack. I took five turns to fully decimate his stack, then began to move on his coastal cities, now surrounded, and futher up the isthmus to Ravenna. Caesar was defending with machine guns, which are a bear to take out.

This war took 30 years, cost Rome eight cities and left my empire reeling with war-weariness. I went for my first golden age to get to fascism quickly because I was running 50% culture in the end and watched with horror as Joao, Hannibal, Zara and Caesar all reached military tech parity (except for combustion). Switched to nationalism and drafted garrisons, upgrading all my feudalism-bred crack troops and feeding them into the fire.

Here is the empire again at peace. Every city is connected by railroad, which may have saved me in the middle of the campaign. I now have one land border spanning three cities, with Boudica and Caesar as a buffer to Joao - very pleased with this. Of course I'll need to watch the north-eastern seaboard, but Hannibal, too, is far away.

853postromanwar0000.JPG


The core of my field army is now down to maybe 15 units plus some artillery. Joao is near parity, after another short war with Boadica who lost one city.

I'm going to spend what's left of my golden age buffing up, then go for a space race win. I have enough population to block anyone on the UN going for diplomatic victory. The only way I can lose now if I get embroiled in another war and overtaken on the way to space, but I think it's unlikely.

In wonder news, I got beaten twice for Statue of Liberty and Broadway, which hurt. Did complete my Ironworks tho, and progressing nicely on West Point and Mt Rushmore. Also am making a dash for the Pentagon.

I wonder if my empire is too big for its own good - we'll see what this engine is capable of when it's running on peace.


 
I've played until ca. 1000 BC; see the spoiler below. This is too detailed (though far from maximally detailed) and will bore even those who have played the map themselves. I've never documented my play on Marathon before; will keep it shorter in the future. More playing, less typing.

As an aside, a thing I've learned is that all units have a hidden 25% city defense bonus against Barbarians, i.e. on top of the city defense modifiers that early units (Warrior, Archer) always have and the anti-Barbarian bonuses from the difficulty level. The combat log lists that as "25% City Barbarian Defense" and it's loaded from CITY_BARBARIAN_DEFENSE_MODIFIER in GlobalDefines.xml. This is a pretty relevant rule to know, and it seems that few players are aware. Among the few posts I've been able to find on CFC that acknowledge the modifier at all, one claims that it only applies on Deity and another (by Kaitzilla even) that it was introduced by the Giant Earth Mod. No, it's already present in v1.0 of the base game.

I'm now thinking of turning the anti-Barbarian combat bonuses into penalties so that they can be shown as part of the hover text for Barbarian units, printed in the light gray Barbarian text color (sample), e.g. "• -5% Strength; • -20% City Attack" (let's say, on Monarch) for land units, "• -15% Strength; • -1 Movement Range" for sea units (replacing the Disorganized promotion), "• -25 Strength" for Animals. And all this should be configurable in Civ4HandicapInfos.xml (not the case currently for city attack and sea unit effects).

Oh, and I've taken a look at Santa's and Jorunkun's first couple of spoilers, but I've been quite slow to explore the map, so I soon had to look away. I did notice some differences in the evaluation of early city sites, but perhaps better to get back to that when my own game is farther along.

Spoiler :
I've successfully implemented the Buddhism plan on t80. Maybe I overestimated the odds of getting beaten to it; I don't think any AI civ was ready to found a 2nd city yet nor had come close to the happiness cap, which are key incentives for founding a religion. Hinduism got founded on t109, Judaism on t157, both by uncontacted civs. Arguably a little late for a 12-civ game, but, then, 29 turns later than me is just about two techs, this is only Monarch difficulty, and I had been very fast with my second city, Meditation really shouldn't be much of a gamble that early, even in a large game.

Screenshot on t79:
Spoiler :

t79_2420BC.jpg

Could still be beaten to Buddhism here, so I've put the settler on the Hill that I want to settle in that case. This way I can found in either spot next turn. I micromanaged that pretty well, interrupting work on a Mine to chop in time. Not perfect; the Warrior that was supposed to ensure the absence of Lions along the way arrived 1 turn late and so I moved the settler next to a fogged tile that I wasn't totally sure was safe. Having a single Warrior take care of everything is a bit tricky, but can certainly be enough to do all the essential early-game exploration on Marathon. Interrupting the Mine for chopping btw caused only 1 decayed worker turn due to how easily Fast Workers move between Hills and Forest. I don't think I've played a full game with India since the change to Fast Worker. Even on Marathon, the new ability isn't too shabby imo. In terms of enjoyment, making terrain irrelevant makes worker management more bland, but it also opens up possibilities for more back and forth. That seems fair enough for a unique unit that comes up randomly only every 35 games.

And I met the Mongolians on t68 (2640 BC). More specifically, I encountered an injured Scout W of Ragnar's capital. The Scout continued northward (too badly injured to bother with healing in neutral territory; an AdvCiv AI change), which may indicate that it came from the S, possibly from a capital SE of Ragnar or S of Saladin.

Next tech Archery. After the settler, Delhi produced a 2nd worker and then a 2nd Warrior, both sped up by another Forest chop, then a 3rd Warrior, then a 1st Archer, meanwhile growing to size 4. Nope, a single Warrior won't be enough once Barbarians appear. Both workers moved to the Holy City of Bombay to improve a Gold Mine in time for Bombay's growth to size 2, then two Flood Plains Farms and the other Gold Mine. No more work needed near Delhi for a long time. The 2nd Warrior got positioned in the NW, the 3rd in the SE, still leaving me exposed from the NE (from across the desert). I positioned the Archer, joined by a 4th Warrior produced in Bombay, in between my two cities to deal with invaders from that direction or any other angle not fully covered. (See the next screenshot.)

On t80, I finally remembered to adjust the Espionage weights; this gets me every time. I went with 2 for Ragnar, 1 for Saladin and Kublai Khan each. I already had demographics for Ragnar, so I took a look at the Graphs and Demographics tab too, which showed him ranked first in production. I wonder if the player should really have that information because it indirectly involves unmet civs. It's nice to get some feedback about the rest of the world when in isolation, but the average values should be enough for that. Maybe I'll change it so that ranks are calculated based on known civs (rank 1 in 4 for Ragnar rather than 1 in 12).

Next techs AH (revealing no Horse, as expected), Wheel, Pottery. The order of these was fairly arbitrary. For the double-Gold city (0 food from those Mines), farming the Flood Plains is fine, and it's not a great city for Slavery. Granary (like all buildings) being relatively expensive on Marathon, taken together with the hurry production nerf, might tip the scales toward Slavery being best used only sporadically. Or maybe that's wishful thinking as I don't enjoy worrying about it all the time ... Pottery before Writing still seems like a good idea because of the speed boost.

Screenshot on t103 (1940 BC):
Spoiler :
t103_1940BC.jpg

First Barbarian spotted, an injured, unpromoted Warrior, probably killed a Scout, possibly the Mongolian one that I saw earlier, arriving at the borders of Bombay from the SE, where I didn't quite have Warrior #3 in position yet. The Barbarian moves 1W, then heals for one turn instead of attacking my Warrior in a Forest, going from strength 1.6 to 1.8, then, on t106, attacks after all at 12% odds, landing only two hits. I feel that Barbarian attack courage is in a good place these days; was arguably too high in BtS and too low in K-Mod (and, until v1.0 or so, also in AdvCiv). The next Barbarian Warrior crossed the desert from the NE and, on t107, unsuccessfully attacked my Warrior on a Desert Hill at 23% odds.

Two turns later, Ragnar founded his second city 2E of my eastern Gold Mine (i.e. 3 tiles from his capital). No chance to wrest that Mine from my Holy City (and the AI should realize that too). That leaves just 2 Ivory (one stolen from the capital) and 5 Flood Plains for Ragnar's city, but I can probably steal 2 Flood Plains, so this a pretty humble spot for a 2nd city.

Bombay started worker #3, Delhi a settler for my 3rd city, to be placed near the Copper. Next, Delhi produced two Archers (growing to size 5) and Bombay one (growing to size 4), then each city started another settler (on t138, t145 respectively).

t123 (1540 BC): With Pottery finished, no tech seemed particularly urgent, so I started Sailing for a trade connection between Delhi and Bombay. Through a single Road, I had already connected Bombay to the Viking cities, and, when I advanced my SE vanguard a little, I noticed Arabia's borders near the desert river in the SE, so Sailing would also connect me with Saladin before long, enabling not just trade routes but also religion spread. What I overlooked is that I already had a trade connection between Delhi and Bombay through cultural control over the coast between them. I switched to Writing after 2 turns when I noticed my mistake and finished Sailing afterwards. By then, all known rivals already had Writing (t116 Kublai, t121 Ragnar, t124 Sal) which resulted in a 7% speed boost from diffusion. No boost for Sailing; maybe no one else has a coastal capital – the AI generally is fond of Sailing.

I didn't really need any tech after Writing (finished on t139). The religion techs are too easy to do without for a long time to sink beakers into them. Buddhism actually, perhaps through unusual luck, spread readily on its own, on t147 to the Viking capital, on t155 to my 4th city (which, however, got razed shortly thereafter), t156 to my 3rd city, t169 to Delhi. IW seemed unnecessary; with still a lot of decent (non-jungle) land to settle and the known AI civs falling behind on their own (I took the lead in score after finishing Writing), Axeman is sufficient until someone gets Catapults. And none of my first four city have enough production to justify a Forge [edit2: I seem to have forgotten, for a moment, here that IW only enables Metal Casting, not Forge directly] and, with 2 happiness from resources and another from religion, - and while still expanding - extra happiness from Forges (or, for that matter, from Monarchy) also isn't very desirable. So I did Masonry because it's cheap and would eventually be needed to connect the Stone and then started Mathematics, which will provide some extra chopping yield. Perhaps Currency afterwards, still before IW.

Open Borders agreements: None with Mongolia for now because I haven't even located them yet and the diplomatic benefit is negligible when there is, apparently, a long geographical distance and no trade routes. And Mongolia scouting around my borders is much more helpful for keeping Barbarians away than letting them explore my territory. Also no OB with Japan, whose Galley passed through a bay in the NE on t173 (970 BC) – the last turn I've played so far. On t149, I finished a Scout intended for exploring the Viking and Arabian cities – also to enable trade routes (which require a revealed path in the mod). Well, the Arabian expedition was thwarted when I needed the Scout to help out against a Barbarian incursion. Before that, I found that Ragnar had 5 Archers in total and was only about to found a 3rd city when I already had 4. He placed that city NE of his capital near a Horse on t161 (1090 BC). Ragnar had IW at that point (research visible through espionage), but it seems rather unlikely that there is Iron near that Horse site, so I reckon it'll still take him some time to get Iron – at which point, depending on his true personality, he might consider war preparations against me.

On t130 (1400 BC), I founded my 3rd city, Vijaynagara, in the North, between Copper, Horse and Jungle Gems (all in the outer ring) and started a Monument, which I finished fairly quickly (t141) by working one Plains Forest and chopping down the other. (Buddhism spread passively shortly thereafter, but I couldn't have counted on that.) Next, a Scout, then a worker (my 4th). To protect the settler against Barbarians, I moved the Archer and Warrior that I had kept on reserve north. Since those weren't going to arrive in time (thought of it too late), I also brought in a Warrior positioned for fog-busting in the NW, risking a Barbarian spawn in that area. Well, I encountered no Barbarians at all while founding Vijaynagara, – but activity increased markedly some 15 to 25 turns later, presumably spurred by other civs founding their 3rd cities. (Up to a point, the target number of Barbarians per continent increases with the ratio of owned to unowned tiles in AdvCiv.) In the process of securing the new city, my units also explored a bit more of the jungle, discovering that only a stretch in the center extends (much?) farther north while there are just narrow strips of coastal jungle in the NW and NE. That also helps explain the few Barbarians thus far.

Since there was nothing to improve at Vijaynagara until a border pop, my three workers next built a road to connect that city – and its Copper – to Delhi, then they chopped the last 2 Forests near Delhi, then they built a Flood Plains Farm in preparation of my 4th city, then circled back to Vijaynagara. At least on Marathon, it seems that chopping everything is, regrettably, the best choice most of the time despite the earlier Lumbermill in the mod. Workers are cheap, and so chopping is cheap. [Edit3: And chopping is extra cheap with Fast Worker.]

On t152 (1180 BC), I got the settler for my 4th city, Pataliputra, founded on t155 near the Stone (see next screenshot). None of the available sites needed to be settled urgently. The Pataliputra site has two Flood Plains that Ragnar's 2nd city will also be able to work, so better to start producing culture there soon. Also, with Flood Plains in the inner ring, the site arguably has greater short-term benefits than the alternatives. I started a Library straight away so that Phi-powered specialists can be assigned in the medium term. The Library was also supposed to give me the border pop for Stone, eventually. Although the Pyramids and Great Wall still haven't been completed (Sonehenge: t130 in a faraway land), I feel reluctant to compete for them this late. (Then Buddhism spread, then Pataliputra got razed - see below ...) Delhi also started a Library, which I ended up 2-pop-whipping on t166. Really was high time to stop working Oases and Plains Hill Mines. Then a Galley to allow Delhi to regrow some population. Speaking of Slavery, I switched out of that again after each use in order to save 1 GPT on civics upkeep.

Lastly, the Barbarians: There's already a precarious situation on t145. A Barbarian Archer – first one I see this game – materializes (probably) in a small fogged non-Jungle strip E of Vijaynagara and moves next to a Warrior of mine. I withdraw the Warrior, which causes the Archer to head straight for Vijaynagara. To bring in a defender in time, I have to move my own Archer onto a Jungle tile between the city and the Barbarian, causing an attack at 23% odds. If I had lost that fight, Vijaynagara would've been razed on the next turn.

On t153 and t154, Barbarian Warriors arrive from the northern jungle and presumably from a fogged 2-tile non-Jungle strip in the NW. In both cases, I successfully attack the Warrior on a Jungle or Forest tile with an Archer at 80% odds, earning each a promotion.

Then, screenshot, on t163 (1070 BC) ...
Spoiler :
t163_1070BC.jpg

... a Barbarian Warrior darts out of the fogged forest NE of Pataliputra, meaning that I'll need a defender there by the end of the next turn. Pataliputra is still 6 turns away from growing beyond auto-raze size. My mistake was that, after placing that city, I hadn't re-evaluated the threat from the NE – and the time that I'd have to respond to it. All I can do now is whip a Scout in Bombay. Scouts have 100% defense against all Barbarians in the mod, not just Animals. That, along with the 5% anti-Barbarian bonus on Monarch (also an AdvCiv change - 0 above Prince in BtS) gives a Scout a more than 50% chance against an unpromoted Barbarian Warrior. Actually, the attacker's odds were less than 30% due to the obscure anti-Barbarian city defense bonus (see start of the post). Still, it's not a shock that my Scout came up one hit short, causing the city to be razed. After that, pursued by my other Scout and two Warriors, the near-dead intruder first moved onto a Flood Plains Farm, then decided to attack the Scout at 4% odds, and won again – before my Warrior finally delivered the coup de grâce. Well, at least the Farm didn't get pillaged.

Two more Barbarians (Warrior, Archer) appear in the N and NW and get killed with much less drama. Around t167, things look a bit dangerous as most of my units have fallen back from fog-bust positions, but, fortunately (or I guess rather due to the mod's memory of past Barbarian activity discouraging future activity for a while), no more Barbarians spawn until my units have reassumed forward positions on t173, see the final screenshot:
Spoiler :
t173_970BC.jpg

Minor side note: There's one of those 3-tile lakes in the Viking lands that I've been trying to disabuse the PerfectMongoose script of in AdvCiv 1.07 because they can make the maps look like Swiss cheese. (The map was likely generated with v1.06.) Well, there's inflow from two rivers, so this one's perhaps plausible enough.

The plan now is to replace Pataliputra once the settler in Bombay finishes. Will chop to speed that up, but just once, I think, because I don't want to miss out on the extra yield from Mathematics. Delhi produces another settler, probably for the spot S of Bombay. That's a bit far away, but I've noticed an Archer of Saladin fortified in the fog of war E of the Cow, so I think he'll come at that Cow sometime soon. Also, having a food resource in the inner ring will be nice; kind of rare on a map that places resources far apart.

Generally, just keep producing workers, settlers and combat units (Axemen from now on), the occasional Library, maybe another Galley – since I'll be reyling on seafood more. I'm still in the score lead after losing the city, so if I just keep doing what I'm doing (preferably without losing more cities), this being Monarch difficulty, I should get a big lead before long.
edit: clarity
 
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Ghandi goes to the moon ...

Spoiler Space Race in t1041 / APR 65 :


The Roman war had stretched my empire to its limits, economically (paying for all that culture) and militarily.

857costofwar0000.JPG


The sharp rise is due to the golden age.

857powergraph0000.JPG


Joao and Hanibal came close to military parity, and had all the latest military tech by the time Caesar and I made peace.

Still, it was the war that decided the final dimensions of the empire, and the strategy for victory.

With Caesar hobbled and Boudica weak and beset by Joao (who, thanks to helping him out against Boudica soon became "pleased"), I had no more near neighbors that could threaten me. My population was big enough to prevent a diplo victory at the UN; later it reached 50%+, meaning guaranteed UN leadership. My army, once I rebuilt it, would repel even Joao or Hanibal, and my navy would keep the coastal borders clear.

My goal was to build up my technological and industrial base and go for space, asap. Here's the empire in 1912; some reconsolidation after all the wars. Joao defeated Ragnar and went for two more wars against Boudica and one against Saladin, but it didn't amount to much.

1912satellitepicture0000.JPG

I timed my great people really well and was able to run two late game golden ages, during which I built up laboratories and developed five industrial cores for the big pieces. The new capital, Karakorum, with its Ironworks did most of the lifting. I also netted Eiffel Tower, Three Gorges Dam and the Internet. Here's the numbers.

GNPhistory0000.JPG


prodhistory0000.JPG


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I was running state property late in the game, had to go to Environmentalism to keep all my cities healthy. Global warming kicked in just as my engines came in.

Space race victory, 46669 / 5821 points. Here's the world map:

finalworldmap0000.JPG


I have some musings in the next post.

 
Spoiler Postgame Musings :


First off, thanks for reading all this, if indeed you did. And thanks to f1rpo, for this mod - I think this game really showcases how the AI and certain choices and settings make for a challenging game beyond other civs getting ever bigger bonuses to everything. And sorry for goofing up on the versions ... sigh.

I thought the map was really pretty, quite fair wrt starts and early resources (except maybe Pacal, who didn't have much good land), and just right for 12 civs. I like it when early rushes are feasible but there is enough room to offer real and relevant strategic choices about where to settle, in what order, and when and whom to attack. On smaller, more crowded maps, there is usually just one dominant strategic option for each player because of geostrategy. I usually play even bigger 2:3 Totestra maps, but PerfectMongoose under these settings creates very similar local conditions, just with less world around it.

I see two viable strategies for the start: Settle toward Ragnar, or settle west and north, giving him some room. The former is riskier, because Ragnar, being in the middle, is hemmed in and must attack to grow - and if you are the weakest of his three neighbors, he might attack you, and even if he doesn't succeed, that's costly, especially early in the game. In my case, it worked out because I was stronger than Saladin (who had a bit of a barb problem I think), and he got the grease, and I got to swoop in and prosper. Still, Ragnar was the main threat for the first third of the game, and Khan and Julius weren't exactly weak either. Defeating Ragnar was the end of act one for my game and made me first among my three neighbors.

I wonder how a more evasive strategy would have panned out. This would have meant settling the seaboard west and then going north, hopefully beating Caesar to some good locations and pushing north into what later became Boudicca's lands. The problem is that there was a lot of jungle to clear, so while it may have worked, it would have made for weaker empire coming into the middle ages. And then you would have to contend with Julius' Legionaries and a much stronger Ragnar, with Berserkers, who may well have dominated the southern part of the continent.

The second act was all about getting to riflemen and later cannon, and then mopping up Khan and Saladin while keeping Caesar at bay. Had he declared earlier, my expansion would have been much slower. The game could still have been lost until I ended the conquest of Arabia - and the war against Rome, when it finally came, was a tour de force.

It would have been possible to go for domination, with the advent of armor and flight. Caesar and Boudica would have been no match - but then what? Joao would have been tough, as would an invasion of one of the three islands. Space race was certainly the safer, if slower option.

I'm curious how the other games play out with regards to the AI, especially in the north. Japan lost two cities to barbs early on; had they held, they would have been more of a player. It's also conceivable that either Khan or Ragnar would dominate the other, or for Caesar to become even more powerful at the expense of Boudica or Tokugawa. Either of these events would have made for a very different game.

Thanks for playing along, and glory to India!

 
"On t80, I finally remembered to adjust the Espionage weights; this gets me every time. I went with 2 for Ragnar, 1 for Saladin and Kublai Khan each."

I used to always forget this, too. Here's what I do wrt early espionage settings now:

In the early game, you can spend four +1 on espionage. Assume one +1 equals 6 points.

What I do is, the first civ I meet, I assign them 12 points (highly divisible numbers ftw) right when we meet, meaning I'll spend two espionage points on them.

The second and third I give 6 points respectively; meaning the first I met (usually the closest) gets +2, the other ones +1.

Once I have a fuller view of the surroundings, I re-adjust; giving 12 to who is actually my nearest neighbor and either 12 to the other nearest one or two times 6 points if there are two - or 8 points each to the three closest or 6 points each to the four closest, if they are equidistant.

I leave it like this until courthouses come online and I have more espionage points to spend, or until the the power balance shifts.

What I mean to say is, using 0, 6,8 and 12 only makes the math easier.
 
Btw, about my versioning stuffup - i just saw that on the day 1.07 came out, I instead dowloaded and installed 1.06 (not 1.07) ... again.

V sorry.
 
I'm at turn 570 (AD 1780). This will probably be my last update for this play along game.


Spoiler Why last entry, reason 1: I feel confident that the game is decided :


I feel confident that the game is decided, even though I haven't met the civs on the other continent. I have defeated Ragnar, I have 1/3 of the world population and 1/4 of the world land area. The second closest civ in military, Rome, has only 55 % of my power with a backwards army. He will soon have Cannons, but I've had Rifles for a long time, and he hasn't even Printing Press (much less Replaceable Parts and Rifling).

If I were to play this game out, I would first simply steamroll Julius, then pick off the remaining civs on my continent one by one.




Spoiler Why last entry, reason 2: I'm experiencing some weird crashes (no game spoilers) :


During some turns, especially during the last 10-20 turns, the game has crashed to desktop unexpectedly. This has happened during my turn -- not in between turns like for instance the "vassal-breaking-free-crash" that was present in the earlier versions.

I've yet to narrow down exactly what I do when it happens. It can happen when panning the map and moving units. Some turns were so problematic that I needed like 5 attempts to get through the turn without crashing.

Since the current save is in state where this crash happens quite frequently, I will do some more testing to see if I can narrow down the cause or at least what seems to trigger it.

The game was likely generated in v.1.06. I don't know if something there messes things up. I've also noticed some weird things that hasn't been problematic at all, but weird nonetheless:

(i) Some Leader musics are wrong, like Boudica having the Gandhi / Ashoka theme and Julius having the Frederick intro theme before transitioning to his own main theme. Maybe this is due to Random Personalities giving them the respective personalities, and the themes sort of pass along? I noticed Julius' favorite civic is Universal Suffrage, which happens to be Frederick's favorite civic.

(ii) The "first impression is a lasting one" relations modifiers are not visible. I don't know if this intended or not with random personalities enabled. Still, there have been some strange things happening like having Saladin be at -1 relations with Ragnar and still be pleased with him, and some leaders be pleased / not be pleased with me despite being below / above the threshold respectively.



Spoiler Turn 570, overview of the final position (just screenshots) :


1780-map.png



------------


1780-demo.png


------------

1780-glance.png



------------

1780-tech.png


------------

1780-stats.png




Spoiler Turn 570, what has happened since last time :


As expected, I got Liberalism first without any problems. I chose Nationalism as my free tech, and proceeded to get Guilds -> Banking -> Economics for the free Great Merchant. Banking is needed for Rifling anyway, so I prioritized to get said GM to start a golden age (my first, have been settling Great Scientists and building Academies with my other great people). Then I went Constitution -> Printing Press -> Replaceable Parts -> Gunpowder -> Rifling.

While doing this, I had a quick war with Kublai, (who had long been fighting Ragnar). His isolated cities of Tiflis and Tabriz were pretty much free, as he was losing quite badly to Ragnar. Then I signed Open Borders with the now Cautious war ally Ragnar, allowing him to send a decently large stack trapped in Mecca to his frontier against Kublai. This tipped the scales very quickly even more in Ragnar's favor, and he promptly defeated Kublai, making Mongolia a thing of the past.

The viking victory was not to last, as I had gotten Rifling around the point when Kublai was defeated. I didn't even institute the Draft, as getting a huge army online was very quick just the same. On turn 570 I captured the last Viking city.



I will probably come with some postgame musings like Jorunkun later!
 
Btw, about my versioning stuffup - i just saw that on the day 1.07 came out, I instead dowloaded and installed 1.06 (not 1.07) ... again.
From the release history I guess. Well, that sounds like force majeure or something.
What I do is, the first civ I meet, I assign them 12 points (highly divisible numbers ftw) right when we meet, meaning I'll spend two espionage points on them. [...]
And since you always assign a weight, even after meeting the first rival, this procedure makes it difficult to forget about it. Automatically assigning such weights, as a BUG option, would sort of defeat the point then. Maybe a one-time reminder would work well that gets displayed when
• all weights are still 0
(or could actually keep track of whether the player has ever adjusted them), and
• met at least two rivals, and
• revealed at least one tile owned by a rival, and
• (for crowded maps) at least one turn has elapsed since the (active) human player has founded his or her capital.
"Having located the Viking Empire on the map and also having met Saladin, perhaps it is time to assign :espionage: weights <Ctrl+E>?" Could be shown as an on-screen message by default or optionally as a popup with a button that leads directly to the Espionage screen ("Let's see the big picture" / "No, not right now") or optionally not be shown at all.

@SantaFlagship: Crashes - sorry to hear, will investigate later.
 
I've continued until AD 1. Pretty uneventful. Another long post; I guess it is less detailed than the last, but more things have been happening per turn. During the next stretch, I expect to do enough exploration to be able to read half of the spoilers.
Spoiler :
Let's actually start with the map on t270 (AD 1), and then organize events thematically:
Spoiler :
t270_ad1.jpg


Cities - on t173, I had 3 left after the Barbarians razed Pataliputra. I rebuilt that city and founded 4 more, so I have 8 now.

• Pataliputra (t181, 890 BC): I've kept the old name. Only works two Flood Plains, leaving the rest to Bombay. I'm about to flip one more from Ragnar. Apart from that, the city runs Scientists and converts its single hammer to Wealth. Getting the Library was a bit tough; worked a Desert Hill Mine for some time, then whipped.
• Agra (t211, 590 BC): At the border to Saladin, stealing his Cow. The main reason for founding this city so early was that it would have food in its inner ring. That's also what I liked about the Pataliputra spot. When I started the settler, I had intended to race Saladin for the Cow, lost that race, but it didn't really matter because Saladin founded his city two tiles away, as I later learned, in order to also reach the Iron farther east. I guess it's the kind of city that high-level BtS players found a lot of – a couple of food resources and not much else, which is good enough for Slavery. That's how I've been using the city too, also because I felt the need for a (military) production city at that point. Got a Granary there (chopped), Barracks (my only one so far), Spearman (double-whipped), Axeman, Lighthouse (double-whipped, overflow into Pyramids).
• Calcutta (t223, 470 BC): On the peninsula S of Delhi. Had to spread borders through a Monument there, so the city hasn't really developed yet. My intention is to mine all 4 (non-Desert) Hills for a production-focused city not reliant on Slavery. I probably would've settled Lahore first if I had had IW at the time.
• Lahore (t241, 290 BC): NE of Delhi. I was going to place this farther west, covering the Oasis (which has now been orphaned). After discovering IW on t233, the eastern spot became more attractive – mainly because it denies Iron to Ragnar; I've got another source right by my capital. Ragnar says he has nothing to gain from importing Copper, so I suppose he must have a source, but it's a mystery where. He's not training any Copper units. So it's not clear how much this city is hurting him for now.
• Madras (t270, AD 1): Nothing special; Rice and Jungle Banana, both in the outer ring, will take some time to develop. But it's right next to my captial, i.e. negligible distance maintenance, easy to reach for workers.

My old cities have mainly produced a lot of units. The first two, Delhi and Bombay, have Libraries, both whipped as they weren't getting much production. (Delhi has fairly high production now due to its Iron source.) They also both have Academies now (more on that later). I've been starting a lot of Granaries just recently; 4 cities are working on them. I don't intend to use Slavery much in those cities – in fact, I've just switched to Caste System for a while – it's really either for +2 health or to help population growth. My 3rd city, Vijaynagara in the north had been kept at size 2 until IW. Now that the Gems are defoliated and the northern riverbank is being improved, the city is growing.

All my cities have stayed pretty small, well below the happiness cap, mainly because I can still grow horizontally. Emblematically, I have just one Cottage so far, built only recently. But this is also due to my two Desert Gold Mines; if it weren't for those, I would've cottaged the majority of my Flood Plains.

I've 4 more sites marked for future cities. [Edit: Oh, those aren't visible in the screenshot. 2 in the northern jungle, 2 along the NW jungle coast and 1 on the SW islands, covering Crab, Clam and mainland Cow. So, 5 actually.] The ones in the north I could more easily be beaten to, but they'll also cost more maintenance and need more attention from workers. If I don't get them, it might not be too difficult to conquer them in the medium term. Will become clearer once I finally explore the north, where, apparently, 5 4 [edit] of my continent's 8 civs have their home. It's also time to do that for the sake of trade routes: Madras only gets domestic routes currently. And I may also be able to sell more resources in the north, especially now that I'm connecting jungle resources.

I've been reluctant to explore earlier because I needed my units against the Barbarians, and more units cost more production. (It's also more fun to explore the map later.) Well, units are pretty cheap to make on Marathon, but I've noticed that unit cost and away-supply are painful – probably should be tweaked a little. If units are relatively cheap, then they should also cost -somewhat- less to maintain. However, the high Barbarian pressure resulting from the spaciousness of the map is important to bear in mind, and I'm OK with unit expenses being a bigger factor on Marathon in general; having to pay closer attention to that is interesting for a change. Anyway, I found myself withdrawing my lookouts into my borders as soon as the Barbarian threat allowed. Especially during the slog to Currency, having to pay 4 GPT in supply and another 3 in unit cost was unacceptable, almost as high as city expenses at that time —

Which is another balance issue with either Huge map size or Marathon: City expenses have felt too lenient. I'm more used to playing on Emperor and smaller maps, that may bias me a little, and I've kept my citizenries small, but still: For Agra and Calcutta, my 5th and 6th city, both founded beyond what should be considered the inner ring of cities around the capital, the (pretty reliable) projected expenses on the found-city button were 0, i.e. my income immediately increased through the single (at that time) trade route and commerce in the city center. Only my last two cities have strained my economy a little bit. It's probably mainly distance maintenance that needs to be increased; seems like I can settle forward with abandon.

Tech path – here's a screenshot highlighting the techs I've discovered or started (Construction) since my last post:
Spoiler :

t173_to_270_techs.jpg

Doing Currency before IW was perhaps a little extreme. I should've considered the potential Iron tile yields and the strategic value of knowing where Iron is located more. That said, Currency has a way of becoming a bigger roadblock the longer one puts it off. Another factor I should've considered ealier is bulbing – especially with a Phi-Spi leader that wants lots of specialists and few Golden Ages (on Marathon). After Mathematics, until Education, Great Scientists will only bulb Alphabet. Of course Alphabet is pretty useless in a No Tech Trading game. So probably I should've already put off Mathematics - doing IW first - in order to bulb Math. Or I could've bitten the bullet and bulbed Alphabet while researching IW after Math. This would've sped up Currency (Alphabet being an alt. req.) about as much as my Academy did and would now allow my next Great Scientist to bulb Philosophy.

As it is, I've placed Academies in Delhi (t199) and Bombay (t268). Having switched to Caste System on my last turn played, perhaps I can avoid further Great Scientists until I get close to Education – by running Merchants instead. Ideally: Merchants in the non-Academy cities, helping me increase the research slider, which benefits the Academy cities.

Getting IW right before Calendar has also lead to a bit of a worker shortage starting around t250. I increased my worker count to 8 then (having seen the problem coming 15 turns earlier or so), but some needed builds still got delayed.

The aim with CoL was mainly to enable Caste Sytem and Civil Service. (Confucianism was founded almost 50 turns earlier, probably by one of the 4 unmet civs.) Before spending 25+ turns on Civil Service, I want to get Construction in the bag.

Plans for war: I'm content with peaceful expansion. Saladin's good cities are far away from me, and Ragnar serves me well as a weak buffer. My aggressive eastern expansion has boxed him in; he may have exhausted his room for expansion at his present 4 cities, without Iron, and his 2nd city is under my culture pressure. He may, however, have a remote Copper city somewhere. Of course this situation will motivate Ragnar, if he's not a complete milquetoast, to start a war. As for (random) personalities, there is a bit of an info leak in the mod as I've come to realize: The attitude threshold for opening borders is one higher when the AI has not seen any land tile owned by its trade partner ("nothing to gain") – which is often the case when the first meeting occurs. A total of 11 AI personalities (out of 52) will open their borders even when Annoyed. Normally, this can't be tested because the AI is Cautious in the early game, not Annoyed, but, with the stricter threshold, membership in that group of 11 is easy to check. In this game, Tokugawa (met on t173), Julius Caesar (t187), and Boudica (t205) were willing to open their borders on the first meeting without having seen mine. Joao (t203) was not willing. For the southern hemisphere, i.e. Sal, Ragnar and Kublai, I didn't check in time. The border-opening personalities are predominantly peaceful types (major exceptions: Ragnar, Stalin) with correspondingly high peace weights.

(I guess I'll close this minor loophole by having everyone require Pleased attitude for Open Borders when having nothing to gain. Only when playing with Random Personalities, that is. Or maybe it's more of a feature than a bug, sometimes providing an unreliable first hint at the true personality upon establishing contact? Having 3 easy-OB leaders among 7 rivals in this game was unusual. Let's perhaps first see how accurate my predictions even turn out to be.)

As the Glance tab (on t223) shows ...
Spoiler :

t223_470bc_glance.jpg

... Tokugawa, Julius and Boudica are Pleased with each other (except Toku vs. Boudica) despite, mostly, having just +1 or +2 relations. The Random Personalities option hides first-impression and rank-based modifiers. So it seems pretty likely that those are all peaceful personalities. Joao is also on -mostly- good terms with them and vice versa, perhaps he's similarly meek.

Then, not visible in the screenshot, when I first met Boudica on t205, she was the worst enemy of Kublai Khan at +/-0 relations. -3 is needed for that in the mod. Curiously, 18 turns later, the hidden modifiers have increased by at least 2. i.e. he's no longer even Annoyed (that starts at -2). Ranks haven't changed much but, I guess, the score ratio between Kublai and Boudica has become more even. My best bet is that Kublai is sensitive about ranks and also has a peace weight somewhat (but not totally) dissimilar from Boudica's. Which is to say, a bit of a hardass.

Kublai, in turn, has fairly warm mutual relations with Sal and Ragnar, again through hidden modifiers. But they don't dislike anyone, so I peg them as middle-of-the-road personalities. So, Ragnar's Pleased attitude toward Sal and toward me (from Buddhism) might or might not strongly dissuade him from war. Saladin currently is Pleased with both Ragnar and Kublai. He will perhaps convert to Buddhism if it spreads to one more city (so far: two), but, even then, remains a potential threat. And Kublai, being Pleased with Ragnar, could well attack me through Ragnar's territory. So far, none of them is overtly building up units. Ragnar does have 3 Horse Archers in 1 AD, and him having bothered to research HBR in the first place is perhaps a bad sign. Sal has gathered 2 Axemen in his city at my border, on top of the regular 2-Archer garrison, but that's just the logical place to park any idle attackers. When I last scouted out Kublai, there were just Archers and a single Spearman (but Kublai has Iron, as does Saladin). Also noteworthy: Ragnar and especially Saladin are still struggling against the Barbarians. They're not losing cities, but I've lately seen Barbarian Archers from Sal's eastern border having roamed (and pillaged) almost up to the western coast. And Kublai Khan may still have a decent amount of (jungle) space for peaceful expansion.

I'll keep producing the occasional combat unit because, once I notice rival buildup, it'll be tough to start from scratch, i.e. from just some Archers scattered across my sizable domain. And it's also conceivable that someone attacks Ragnar and that I'll want to conquer at least Ragnar's capital in order to limit the gains of the invader. Expensive units will give me more power per (GPT) unit cost. I can already produce Swordsmen, but Catapults will be even better from that angle. Once I have Construction, I'll also be able to unlock War Elephants within a dozen turns if need be. (But I'd rather skip it as long as I can.)

Future tech plans: I see myself headed toward having almost 50% more cities and territory than most of my rivals. Once I consolidate that, I should get a sizable tech lead, and the safest and, at least in terms of turns played, fastest way to win from there will be a big war of conquest against whichever targets. The Middle Ages are too early for realizing this plan, so I'll want an (early) early modern unit. Could use Cuirassier, Rifleman or Cannon (possibly followed by Grenadier). And I'll definitely want to be first to Liberalism. To that latter end, I only need the following techs:
Civil Service, Paper, Philosophy, Education (bulb), Liberalism.​
Cuirassier will require these additional techs:
HBR, Aesthetics, Literature, Music, Gunpowder, Nationalism, Military Tradition​
Rifleman requires:
Metal Casting, Machinery, Alphabet, Guilds, Banking, Gunpowder, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts, Rifling.​
Cannon requires:
Metal Casting, Machinery, Engineering, Gunpowder, Chemistry, Steel​
Most of those techs aren't terribly useful to me by themselves. Literature, somewhat, for the National Epic, Metal Casting for Forge, Banking for a detour to Economics for the free Great Merchant. (I don't think I could reach Music in time for the Great Artist.) Off the paths, Monarchy and Feudalism would be useful for their civics, and Feudalism would also speed up Guilds on the Rifling path. Still, the Rifling path is easily the longest. Between Cuirassier and Cannon, it's a tougher choice. Speed is going to matter less on Marathon, and Cannon packs a bigger punch. So I'm leaning toward that path, to be interleaved with the Liberalism path, starting with Civil Service once Construction is done. Whenever I start Metal Casting, a preliminary choice will have been made.

A note about the Pyramids: Baffling that they're still available in AD 1 in a 12-civ game. Actually, behold the wasteland that is the Wonders tab:
Spoiler :

t270_ad1_wonders.jpg


I've started the Pyramids on t260 (100 BC) in Agra, after, at long last, connecting my Stone source. The construction is running on the backburner, receiving whip overflow. I'm not counting on finishing it, but, who knows, and it's worth finishing because, with the Cannon plan, I won't come near Constitution. Why has the AI not been constructing wonders? For one thing, I haven't met any Industrious leader yet. More importantly, the high Barbarian activity and abundance of space for expansion pose major distractions from all buildings, and Marathon makes buildings extra costly compared with units. But there may also be a sneakier reason: The placement frequency formula for all strategic resources has a per-player component – which makes sense if the aim is to give everyone access to strategic resources eventually. On a sparsely populated map, empires will be bigger, so fewer strategic resources need to be placed. In other words, I suspect that few civs, if any, had early access to Stone or Marble on this map. Perhaps for Stone, Marble, Horse, Copper and, to a lesser extent, Iron, the per-player aspect needs to be dialed down in favor of the constant placement rate. The tech pace is actually also lagging behind the game year, with me and Ragnar, two of the (Gold-endowed) tech leaders, still researching Construction, for which I've been aiming at a ca. 300 BC discovery date (on account of Catapult) when revising the years-per-turn progression. The lag isn't dramatic and will likely be reversed later in the game. Generally, I don't think the mod should adjust to a non-default player count; should rather assume that any consequences (such as more Barbarian activity) are intended by the player. That being said, it would be desirable to extend AI code for dealing with the Raging Barbarians option to also affect undercrowded games or, better, to replace any existing yes-no checks for extraordinary Barbarian pressure with a threat value, for more nuanced AI behavior.

Lastly, how did I actually fare against the Barbarians? Land units were only a minor distraction in this millennium, with just 4 Warriors appearing near my borders on t175, t185, t191, t192 and then no land units for more than 50 turns. I did get the impression that those Warriors appeared very readily in small holes (1 or 2 tiles) of fogged non-Jungle tiles and that Jungle tiles were almost always spared; a single Archer spawned in a 2-tile Jungle patch NW of Delhi on t246. I may need to tweak those probabilities a little. It also worries me that no Copper-based Barbarians showed up at all. I would've expected them to start appearing soon after t200. Will have to investigate this later.

At sea, Barbarian Galleys tend to appear sooner than I expect them; in this game, on the same turn that I finished my first Galley (t177). That first one did not enter "my" bay (where Delhi, with 1 Fish, and Bombay are situated), moved somewhere SE, briefly severing my trade connection with Kublai Khan, returned a while later (or it may have been a different one) and then got killed by the Mongols. Since a single Galley is only a barebones defense against sea Barbarians and because I was going to have two more Fish at stake in the SE (Agra, Calcutta), I produced another Galley around that time. I also (mostly) kept both Galleys near the entrances to my bay and to Saladin's (where 3 Arabian cities and Agra sit). Fog-busting the islands near me and Sal in the SW would've required several more Galleys. Just three more Barbarian Galleys came my way in total, all between t236 and t258, and all died attacking my Galleys at 20-something percent odds. Just one of them had cargo, a single Archer, which got dropped next to Calcutta, where I had kept two units at hand for this eventuality. All fair enough so far.

I know only of two Barbarian cities, one on the scarcely explored continent in the far northwest (units encountered there make clear that it's really a remote part of my own continent) and one east of Arabia. That seems few for such a spacious map, but, at least along my own borders, I had been fog-busting a lot, so maybe more cities were placed in the unknown parts of the map. The city placement rate gets the same Marathon adjustment as Barbarian units, i.e. a divisor of 225%. Using the same adjustment as for settlers, i.e. 250%, would be more intuitive - but would lead to even fewer Barbarian cities.
Will have to end on this boring note lest I add more verbiage.
edit: clarity, typo
 
Last edited:
I haven't read all your spoilers yet, Jorunkun, in case I want to continue the game later. The latest one I've read is "The Great Wars".

I've read both your long posts, f1rpo. Got to keep exposing myself to your prose :lol:

On a more serious note, though, I have really been enjoying both! It's so much fun getting a glimpse into how others are playing this game after so many years playing on and off.

@SantaFlagship: Crashes - sorry to hear, will investigate later.

Please don't feel too bad about it. It's actually quite remarkable that I can even run the game on my OS. It's almost plug-and-play even, but not quite. Some 32 bit XML libraries have to be manually installed into Wine and such.

In any case I might have stopped playing around that point anyway -- late game civ can feel like a slog if there is no challenge left. On that note, maybe I should indeed play it out fully, as to compare how much of a difference the new Marathon speed makes.

I will try reloading the same turn a few times and do some different actions, and see if I can get it to crash again!

The Random Personalities option hides first-impression and rank-based modifiers.

As I suspected then. I really have not been playing much with this option at all in AdvCiv! I used to play with it enabled all the time in vanilla.

Which is another balance issue with either Huge map size or Marathon: City expenses have felt too lenient. I'm more used to playing on Emperor and smaller maps, that may bias me a little, and I've kept my citizenries small, but still: For Agra and Calcutta, my 5th and 6th city, both founded beyond what should be considered the inner ring of cities around the capital, the (pretty reliable) projected expenses on the found-city button were 0, i.e. my income immediately increased through the single (at that time) trade route and commerce in the city center. Only my last two cities have strained my economy a little bit. It's probably mainly distance maintenance that needs to be increased; seems like I can settle forward with abandon.

I have also felt this at times, but was unsure if the feeling was justified or not. AdvCiv (or K-Mod?) removed the cap for number of cities maintenance, which was a good change. In this play along game, even while I was running Vassalage, the distance maintenance has been pretty negligible compared to number of cities.
 
It's funny you should mention the number and distance of city expenses.

On 1.06, the cost scaled up pretty aggressively once you hit around 6 or 7 cities on huge / marathon - like with other map sizes, I presume.

Last night, I took 1.07 for a drive and noticed the same thing SantaFlagship describes above - my economy was thriving viz comparable previous games. I also read his play accounts for the playalong as well and noticed that he seemed to do exceedingly well on tech compared to my similarly sized empire.

Seems like something about the re-scaling changed the economy in favor of larger empires.
 
... I have really been enjoying both! It's so much fun getting a glimpse into how others are playing this game after so many years playing on and off
Same here, it's really interesting to see how other people go about their games and how it plays out.

late game civ can feel like a slog if there is no challenge left. On that note, maybe I should indeed play it out fully, as to compare how much of a difference the new Marathon speed makes.

Agree with this as well, although one of the reasons I play huge and many civs is that the game does often remain challenging well into the modern era, especially when there are other faraway contenders for space race.

I'd certainly like to see your final write-up, for comparison's sake, and for resolving this scaling issue.

Ganbatte!
 
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