ALC 19 Spoiler Thread (don't read this, Sis)

[Gooblah]

Because of the massive amount of spoilers as well as the fact Sisutil himself has askd for something like this, I present the ALC 19 Spoiler Thread
Analyze the game and post spoilers here, please. Actually, analyze the game in the real ALC thread!

Okay, no need for spoilers here, and Sisutil, don't read this!

 

[r_rolo1]

I beleive that the S man already suspects of what is happening: last time he had so many spoilers in the game was in ALC 15

I haven't checked the map yet, but Gilga in isolation screams for Priesthood beeline ( for the UB and Oracle ) and Oracling Monarchy ( for HR ), and a monumental ReXing of the land avaliable. Then Currency, CS calendar and then, who knows?...

 

[madscientist]

The spoiler was deleted very early but not only is Gilgamesh isolated, there is no iron or copper.

OK, say he plays it out and meets the AI, what are the drawbacks of no iron.

1) Land Military: No knights, crossbows, pikes. No cannons.
2) Naval: No Frigates, ironclads, destroyers, carriers, battleships
3) No railroads.
4) 50% production bonus to ironworks.

Now he is also playing on emperor and my experience is emperor 3.13 techs a hell of alot faster than emperor 3.03.

Not only is this going to be a replay of the Muhmed game, it's worse because of the metal limitation.

Also he better get the great wall or he'll have some real trouble with teh barbarians, thos cities pop out real fast.

I still say the map is a regen as it does not show off the UU or UB real well.

 

[alcaras]

Interesting.

4 continents (effectively). Every other civ has a trading partner but Sisi...

I think regen, or else we don't really get to see the power of the Vulture.

A map gen comment -- how are there 2 civs on the north continent and 2 on the east -- east is nearly twice as big as north...

 

[Proud]

A map gen comment -- how are there 2 civs on the north continent and 2 on the east -- east is nearly twice as big as north...

For a human at least, surely one's a good chance to have 2 capitols to yourself early on, the other maybe more room but a bigger longer fight for them?

 

[Jet]

But will AIs trade with each other if they only know each other? I doubt it, they won't with the human.

I suspect he can't win without land from another continent. Diplo, maybe. But his capital isn't good enough and his continent in general isn't good enough. EDIT: Well, not Space or Domination. I'm a bad judge of whether Diplo or Cultural are possible. (I don't remember seeing any other good Big 3 sites, but maybe he could make do with just-OK ones.)

Is the northern continent reachable before Optics? I saw, but forget. Even if it's only by ocean, I wonder if a hard beeline (with careful lightbulbs) to Astro and Gunpowder (Galleons, Protective Muskets, and Trebs, all under Vassalage) could get him more land. But just to attempt it, he'd have to be a lot more single minded than usual.

 

[alcaras]

Is the northern continent reachable before Optics?

No, there's ocean in between.

 

[KMadCandy]

edit: *giggle* i posted this novel and then looked at the real thread to find out he started again with a new map! good call for the purpose of ALC i think. all my comments below are about the original start, with the dye.

i'm playing this one myself, first time i've done that with an ALC. no copper and no iron is such a pain!

what are the drawbacks of no iron.

1) Land Military: No knights, crossbows, pikes. No cannons.
2) Naval: No Frigates, ironclads, destroyers, carriers, battleships
3) No railroads.
4) 50% production bonus to ironworks.

Also he better get the great wall or he'll have some real trouble with teh barbarians, thos cities pop out real fast.

I still say the map is a regen as it does not show off the UU or UB real well.

railroads take coal or oil in BtS, iron isn't a factor. i'm learning steam power in my shadow atm so i don't know if we have any coal, we better! i did finally get some copper on an island not far away after taking astro with lib. no frigates might have been a disaster, but turned out okay since i beat everybody except gandhi to chemistry. he didn't know astronomy, so my privateeers were safe from figates for a while. then i went and culture-swiped iron from mehmed in the worst city evah ... no food bonuses, half the tiles are ice, but there was iron nearby.

But will AIs trade with each other if they only know each other? I doubt it, they won't with the human.

i think maybe all rules go out the window when you're at Friendly? i know that WFYABTA does, and i've had cases like JC trading me rifling when he's the only one that knows it, but we're friendly so he ignores that. mansa is the only one that doesn't care about true monopoly techs under other circumstances. in my shadow of this game, HC loved gandhi when i met them. +16 (mostly due to shared religion and wise civics), so i kinda suspect that they traded. i don't know the code so i don't know for sure. i think there were only 2 techs that one knew but the other didn't when i met them.

the AIs have been teching quite fast, with the exception of "oh let's have another war shall we?" mehmed and darius. zara's spending a lot on espionage, i've never had city visibility on him much less investigate. sometimes i can't even see what he's teching grrrrrrr. even tho he's devoting major commerce or specialists to espionage, he's teching well. he was first to several techs. HC didn't let me put off the economics GM for as long as i wanted to. he was quick, but i won.

I suspect he can't win without land from another continent. Diplo, maybe. But his capital isn't good enough and his continent in general isn't good enough. EDIT: Well, not Space or Domination. I'm a bad judge of whether Diplo or Cultural are possible. (I don't remember seeing any other good Big 3 sites, but maybe he could make do with just-OK ones.)

we all know i'm an oddball. i wanted to test out a culture game with an isolated start. but also i want this game to last long enough to see the later techs. i've never teched all the way up to broadway/hollywood/eiffel tower in a culture game. and i want to see corporations from that perspective too. i know sushi is amazing when i'm trying to win tiles in a late-game war. so, my oddball variant is that i'm not allowed to touch the culture slider. i hate not being spiritual, anarchy is the pits, so i've been in slavery forever, i haven't used caste since i know i wouldn't stay there. so, my criteria for "potential big 3 sites" is different than it usually is. here i'm counting a lot on culture from wonders so i need production, and i've been settling the great artists the wonders give me.

more ramblings about my shadow game so far, spoilered for space:

Spoiler :

i did build the great wall like madscientist mentioned. i kind of didn't want to, since great spies are a waste until you meet people, but my second city had trees to chop, and it is really nice to not have to worry about the barbs. i built parthenon and MoM in that city too, aiming for artists. i only got one great spy, i think the first GP from that city was a spy, i settled him in my capital. the barbs were out there in force. i culture-flipped two barb cities . razed both, they were one tile off from my sign. i guess it was before they learned Writing.

the only melee troops i made were warriors, even after i could in theory make maces. the barbs had archers for ages before i finally bothered to learn it! i read that they get them automatically on a certain turn (50ish maybe?) on levels where the AI civs start with archery. i didn't build my first archer until 900ish AD, just plain didn't need to since barbs were locked out and i hadn't met anybody else. i made one and when the advisor pop-up congratulated me i finally remembered that gilga's protective

gilga's traits aren't ones i've used for CV before, and i don't think i've ever aimed for culture on an isolated start. i never pick a creative civ for CV, since IMO +2 culture is nothing in the big picture and the buildings are cheap anyway. so it's been interesting for me, completely different from my usual style.

in my world of the 3 sets of 2, HC and gandhi are both buddhist (HC founded it). mehmed/darius didn't have any religion until i brought a missionary over. zara got conf, sitting bull got hinduism, but they didn't fight about it at all until 20 or so turns ago. i could see gandhi was teching divine right when i was, but i beat him to it. poor guy didn't found any religions at all. i kept seeing "great general so-and-so has been born in a far away land" messages, i should have known it was somebody imperialistic. darius and mehmed still don't get along, even now that they share a religion. mehmed's declared war on darius 3 times and counting. darius started it once, but not his fault, i bribed him .

overall they're being nice, particularly considering everybody has a state religion, total of four flavors between us. the only one to declare on me (so far) was mehmed and he's jewish like me . he got a little peeved when i settled an outpost on his continent to grab stone. i really didn't expect to hear war horns and i was 100% unprepared. i knew he was WHEOOHRN but i thought he was aiming at darius ... then i saw THIS in darius's borders one step from my teensy city:



i had a longbow there, and a spy, and that's it. granted i'm protective, but i didn't think my LB could stand up to that 26-unit SoD! luck was on my side, the city had never above size 1, so i let him have it, knowing that it would auto-raze. i bribed in darius for a distraction. that was the only city of mine he could reach. silly AI, DoWg without astro when the core of the candyland empire is far away. i didn't bother going on offense. i just waited until the dust settled, and then went back and settled in the exact same spot *giggle*. stone is a cath doubler, that's serious business! (extra neener-neener points: now i own that town in the pic. cyrus sweetly grew up from an itty bitty cottage and then let me culture-swipe it.)

Is the northern continent reachable before Optics? I saw, but forget. Even if it's only by ocean, I wonder if a hard beeline (with careful lightbulbs) to Astro and Gunpowder (Galleons, Protective Muskets, and Trebs, all under Vassalage) could get him more land. But just to attempt it, he'd have to be a lot more single minded than usual.

i settled on the top north of our continent, pony-double-fishville is my statues city. i met gandhi when i discovered Optics but before i made a boat, because of the +1 sight over water counting for borders too. i'd never thought of that, made me giggle.

i didn't really beeline anything, well i got theology from oracle for the AP, can't live without it. i basically meandered when i decided to try a culture focus. i was first to optics by a mile, but i delayed CoL and CS maybe more than i ever have in any other game. didn't learn construction until HC traded it to me. seeing Notre Dame BIADL before it ever appeared on my build list reminded me that there is a good reason to learn engineering even in a game where you don't plan to make any siege weapons at all /sigh.

i'm having fun so far. i rather doubt that i can reach legendary before they reach alpha centauri if i keep my hands off the slider. i could of course try to slow them down with a war, but i just don't want to.

edit: i scrolled back in the log. evidently i learned hunting in 910 AD, archery in 920 AD. three cheers for procrastination! it's right before machinery, i only researched them to not get ridiculous trade offers since i knew i'd be meeting the AIs soon.

this is good news for you guys by the way. since i've played the map and know who's on it, i'll have to hush up pretty much in the thread, don't want to spoil anything.

this i don't understand at all:
the great wall has the "stop barbs" effects only on that continent, and only on the land. their boats can still come pillage your fishing nets etc, that's fine. but i am getting extra GG exp when the privateers i keep at home for defense kill somebody in my own waters. that's good! but when earn 1 exp on the boat, i get three GG points. i'd expected it to be 2 if the water counted. what's up with that? if i earn 1 exp in free-for-all ocean, i get 1 GG point as i expected.

 

[LlamaCat]

there is very clearly copper in this game and it's easily reachable for the second city - he just needs to explore the map a little more. lot of bruhaha over nothing.

 

[WTBCzero]

there is very clearly copper in this game and it's easily reachable for the second city - he just needs to explore the map a little more. lot of bruhaha over nothing.

It's a bit far away from a second city. The copper near Washington will likely be grabbed soon by him, and the other source of copper is too far away to be useful.




Looking in worldbuilder, i noticed the following interesting things:

Spoiler :

(1) None of the AIs are researching a religious tech. Not even Ragnar!

(Yeah, I know this is a spoiler thread. But I'm not sure if everyone in here is playing shadow games or looking in worldbuilder. So I'll spoiler it just to be safe.)

(2) All of the AIs are running at 80% research and 20% Espionage. This seems a bit of a disadvantage, they're slowing down their research rate! Is this pre-programmed or what?

 

[LlamaCat]

well I thought they downplayed the AI spending on espionage with the patch but who knows... different leaders still give varying priorities to spying. I setted my second city and got the copper near the coast no problem before Ragnar. This is a situation I often find myself in -- you have to get the strategic resource even if it means a longer distance sometimes, and then you backfill your borders with the 3rd and 4th cities. That said, I'm no good on Emperor level so if I continue the game I will most likely get it handed to me. But if Sis gets the copper all the head-scratching about what to do next should go away, and I still think it's the best route.

 

[njorls]

This thread was started on the original map Sisiutil rolled where there was no easily accessible copper and he was isolated. He has since changed maps.

 

[LlamaCat]

I think on the new map they still have not found any copper, but maybe I missed the discovery discussion at some point in that thread. seems they are debating what to do considering there is no copper.