Aegypta eternalis

[ekktor]

1871
Kagoshima is liberated from the indians and given back to the japanese. Nakhon Si Thammarat is liberated and given back to Siam. The city of Macau is taken from the chinese. The UN project is completed, it will take some more years before a vote is organised. In the meantime our overall strategic goal must be to secure as many votes as needed.

Spoiler :

1873
Gandhi emissaries make peace offerings but refuse to consider making peace with Russia and our allied city states, so war goes on for now. Our allies from Florence have already captured Pataliputra and Dehli. The city of Martaban is captured from the romans and given to Siam.

1874
Persepolis is liberated from the romans. London is liberated from the indians. The city of Bangalore is captured from the indians.

1875
Elizabeth thanks us from freeing London by calling us bloody warmongers. If we don't need her vote for the UN, we might just make her right. Wu Zetian finally agrees to reasonable peace conditions, including making peace with all our city states allies.

1877
Pasargades is liberated from the romans and given back to Darius. Osaka is liberated from the indians and given back to the japanese. Xochicalco is liberated from the romans. The city of Madurai is captured from the indians. Also Bismark, Wu Zetian, Hiawatha and darius declare war on Oda Nobunaga. Some guys just don't like peace.

1881
UN vote time has come and Egypt gathers more than enough votes to at last bring peace to this weary world.

Spoiler :

 

[ekktor]

On the strategy
I did not choose a victory condition at start and tried to keep my options opened for a time. Since I tried to stay more or less in character though, I ruled out domination victory for Ramses.
I was lucky on the starting conditions with Washington as only very close neighbour and Moctezuma, although close, did not expand aggressively towards me. Then made a big mistake that cost me the GL: I thought I had time for a warrior and a settler between Stonehenge and GL. I should have swapped build priorities to keep the GL completion after Philosophy was discovered, but just after.
The only potential difficult time was the Greece-Siam alliance and Alexander attack on Memphis. I overestimated a lot the swordsmen resistance to a hoplite attack and nearly lost the former. Fortunately the AI made a very very bad move in 80 BC, which removed all greek military threat. From that time on, victory was almost certain. It was just a matter of not making any major blunder and patience.
I certainly could have optimised a lot and finished earlier but there was little incentive.

Lessons learned
Huge pangea maps are too big if you like (as I do) to have the whole starting continent settled during industrial at the latest and civilisations having to fight for lebensraum or colonise other continents (on Terra maps). I had increased the number of players to 16 (from 12) but even with two more, lots of unsettled lands would have remained. A Terra map might solve the starting continent problem but the AI handling of sea strategy seems to make this map an easy win for the human player (you just need to survive until you can cross the ocean).

On Civ itself
Ad amicos
The game graphics are nice, the game is easy to play. Units combat animations are usually very nice also. On the overall the game is easy to understand yet deep enough to keep you busy.
Although there are many issues with the 1UPT system, I see it as an improvement with respect to the Civ2/Civ3/CivIV "unlimited-stack-one-unit-attacks-at-a-time" system that made absolutely no sense at all. In some circumstances it allows for nice "combined arms" attacks and forces you to think about where to place units. The major concern in this game was the "unlimited open border pact" with Alexander (an unexplained bug I suppose) and the frequent times greek workers would block my roads. It makes sense to simulate road/terrain clogging during military actions but peaceful strategic moves are on a scale so slow that having workers block your movement in such circumstances is just an incentive not to sign any open border treaty. In order to solve this problem the game could, for example allow overstacking when:
both

• friendly units are on a road hex,
• no unit is in an enemy ZOC,
• the unit entering the occupied hex is on its national territory,

Assuming in case of combat, an overstack unit fight at 25% of its strength (Administrative Movement mode). The present limitations can far too easily be abused.

Ad criticos
First and foremost: the AI is worse than bad at combat.
Even CivIV, which was far from good, was much better. How can the next game have a worse AI? The greek troops movements in 80 BC were so stupid that I can't understand how it has been programmed. Even the crudest algorithm would not make a move to a position it just computed the turn before as worse than the current one. Either a major bug/flaw in the evaluation function or far to more "randomness". AI also lacks "group tactics" I saw AI arty fire on a unit after it had been attacked in close combat and when no other close combat attack was possible. Again even a simple priority in AI combat resolution would have solved this. In addition, since the AI can no longer zerg you with huge stacks, it is currently heavily penalised by the 1UPT rule. At strategic level, the AI could use a little "Clausewitz for dummies" to get familiar with the concepts of "concentration of forces" and "economy of ressources". When it has a big army, let it not not send units peacemeal across all the front .

Second AI rulers are self indulgent, ungrateful and suicidal.
I read somewhere that the new AI was supposed to "play to win". Diplomacy interactions made more sense in CivIV I think. Gandhi wishing me "bad luck for my little war" after I just attacked the chinese who were taking indian cities without resistance or Hiawatha wishing me the same right after I liberated his first city were hilarious. I think Firaxis needs to understand that "AI playing to win" does not mean "obnoxious AI". The same goes with Wu Zetian, down to 4/5 cities and with no army left, refusal to make peace, when the only thing I asked was that she also made peace with all my CS allies. Such behaviours do not increase by a micron the chances of victory of the AI.

The end word
Worth the time, next try will be Epic/Large(14 or 15 civ)/Pangea most likely with Rome.

 

[KuroRyuuD]

Fantastic read, can`t wait for the next!

I can`t agree more to what you said about the AI. It always rushes all it`s forces towards your cities, if you`re at war, leaving their own cities completely unprotected. Before yesterday i played as Arabia while my arch-enemy was the Ottomans, he controlled half the continent while i only had 4 cities and just a few units. He rushed My cities with all of his units, just to get them crushed, despite me being at a military disadvantage, as his last troop fell, i charged his cities and they offered no resistance, on King level. He literally commited seppuku*, by getting rid of his army.

Also i`d like to add, the AI is completely random, not only do the AI`s not understand the situation they`re in, but also they create cities to the right and left. For example creating a city right on my trade route betwean two of my seperated cities. The worst part is that there`s nothing you can do about it, either you go to war and raze the city or make a new trade route. This may be stupid, but it shows no respect toward you.
One more, last thing, yesterday i tried out a very interesting abuse. The situation was as follows; I had 3 cities, my enemies - France(10), Egypt(4) and England(10), both France and England declared war on one another and both on Egypt. I thought that Egypt will be a good addition to my cities, so i thought i`d garisson my units around Thebes, the capital of Egypt. In just about 30 turns Thebes destroyed almost half the French and English armies, because they couldn`t do anything to the Egyptians. Maybe this was old news. The AI just doesn`t understand, that i was hindering them from victory.

 

[CrazyCelt]

Thank you for this write up. Reading this makes me want to do one of my own, but alas, I am to lazy. Thanks for helping me to pass a slow work day. One question What do you mean by GL???

 

[ekktor]

Thank you for your kind words, I should have been less lazy, GL meant Great Library (true it could mean many other things in CiV).

 

[CrazyCelt]

Cool thanks for the clarification.

 

[endymion]

Its a nice read. I personally love huge pangea maps, they where my favorite in civ 4. The only problem i have now is that te turns take too long once i reach turn 200 orso. I just cant stand the wait ibt then. What kind of specs does your computer have?

 

[ekktor]

What kind of specs does your computer have?

Intel i950 with 6Go RAM and a 256 Go SSD disk for the system and the demanding applications (incl. CiV). Graphics are managed by 2 Ati HD 4800. It is quite ok, although the loading time and end of turn are still "a bit too long" for a turn-based strategy game.