ALC Game 15: Ottoman/Mehmed II

[KMadCandy]

Unless I'm misinterpreting it (which is entirely possible), that seems to say pretty indisputably that Catherine will not declare war if her attitude is Friendly. She will, however, declare war with a 20% chance (80% of no war) when she's Pleased. That's the highest value for any AI, but it's not unique. There are six other leaders that also have an 80 for Pleased.

One possible explanation for the controversy is that this value could be modified based on difficulty level. Then, for example, the leader would have a decreased chance of no war if you played a Diety game. That seems intuitively reasonable, but I can't find anything in the handicap level definitions that supports this theory. And even if it's true, that would change all of the 100's for Friendly leaders, not just Catherine's.

nah, i don't think it's difficulty level. i looked into it some more and i think it's actually the coding about bribing that got read by somebody somewhere as DoW code. and then the word got passed around. i know i read it, believed it, and saw something on the tables that said "friendly" on it that seemed to confirm it. anyway...

every leader has "DeclareWarRefuseAttitudeThreshold", you have to be closer to them than this limit for them to help you in a war.
every leader also has "DeclareWarThemRefuseAttitudeThreshold", our intended victim has to be no closer to the person we're bribing than this limit.

so, if we want catherine to attack gandhi, that's easy as sin. her values are: her attitude towards you (the one asking for the war) has to be better than annoyed, and her attitude towards asoka must be friendly or lower . she really is rather a slut. "if you have enough money and i'm not furious with you, anything is possible" is her motto i think.

gandhi, by contrast, has to be higher than pleased with us to consider helping, and has to be be annoyed or worse towards catherine. that guy has standards. ok ok, i will admit that he doesn't do the cute ponytail toss thing.

those values, i think, are only for trades, which would be bribing into wars, not for the RNG rolls of "is it time to declare war". so it's not really the same thing as "catherine will declare as friendly" on her own out of the blue, altho that's how i read it when the rumor started going around. altho i suppose it does make her even more of a backstabber/dogpiler than we already knew she was, if that code applies across AIs too and not just between them and the human player. all i know is, i hate catherine. totally and completely. i'd rather face 4 isabella's in a game than 1 catherine some days.

 

[carl corey]

In vanilla Civ Cathrine declared war on me while we were both at war with another AI. Backstabber of the worst kind...

 

[Hackapell]

Yes, I have noticed that Catherine is not only a peerless backstabber but she always has the tech lead. Luckily I've always been on her good side

 

[Sisiutil]

Round 6: 1358 AD to 1520 AD

I started off the round by implementing some of your suggestions. I converted to Buddhism to try to court some favour with that religious block:

I then made the rounds, hat in hand, begging for a handout, alms for the poor, a free tech, if'n you please, sir, and all that. To no avail:

I got some good news a few turns later, though. I got my next Great Person, a scientist in Istanbul:

I used him to lightbulb Philosophy, which a couple of the AI civs still did not have. I then made a couple of tech trades:

Once that was done, I went into the tech tree and commenced my bee-line towards Democracy, betting the game on a switch to Emancipation to kick the CE into high gear:

Shortly after that, once I had Calendar and could get the sugar available for trading, I switched civics:

...since the Great Scientist had proved so useful, I was hoping to produce more of them in short order, all for the purpose of tech trading.

However, disaster then struck.

Yes, the event we had all been fearing most came to pass. And my very recent civic switch away from Slavery, of course, made the timing even worse. I couldn't whip units and had to wait 3 turns to do so. Nor could I gain any allies.

As a result, the 1 Knight, 3 Trebuchets, and 2 Grenadiers Cathy landed had a field day.

She then went on to raze Gaziantep and Ankara in short order. So I lost 3 cities very quickly, including two of my oldest and best ones, and my sole supplies of stone, horse, and gold went with them. Not good.

Finally I was able to change civics:

I quickly whipped several units, mainly Catapults, Spearmen, and Macemen. Eventually, I managed to wipe out Catherine's expeditionary force, though obviously at a very high price.

I played a few more turns to wait for Cathy to talk to me again so that I could, hopefully, settle things. Hey, baby, you want some sugar? I got some sugar! I got your sugar right here!

You can guess what that earned me:

Okay, I probably deserved that.

At any rate, things are not looking good. To add insult to injury, before the embers of Bursa were cold, Ragnar settled a city on the very same spot. I also have a German Galleon sniffing around, no doubt with a Settler on board as well.

I am building a couple of settlers to reclaim the spots left open by Gaziantep and Ankara, but I have a bad feeling that Cathy's on the way with more units, since she's unwilling to make peace. Then again, that could just be because I have no gold or techs to sweeten the deal. Just sugar, which is, this one time, evidently not sweet enough.

So here's a look at the situation. The map:

Domestic advisor:

... and the power graph:

I might be able to hold Cathy off with Catapults. I might be able to reclaim one or even two of my lost city sites. However, I've lost a lot of much-needed population (not to mention 3 cities!) to whipping, and I now have another civilization on my turf. A relatively friendly one, granted, but my island is no longer my own.

I think it's going to be difficult to win from this position, and keep in mind that Cathy has not called off the dogs yet. I'm not saying I'm giving up, just that I don't have a lot of cause for optimism.

Somebody call me a WAAHHHHHHmbulance.

 

[KMadCandy]

You might be right, but that's not a good reason not to ask. As someone else mentioned earlier, if the AI doesn't want to give you a technology, they just say no. There's no diplomatic penalty for asking.

there's no diplo penalty for asking, but techs given as gifts do count towards WFYABTA. that likely won't be much of an issue in this particular game, especially in light of recent events, just something i wanted to add for folks who aren't aware of that. (i'm quite sure you yourself are!)

S - have i mentioned lately that i HATE cathy? oh yeah i did, was only 3 or 4 posts ago. well i still do. even more so after what she did to you!

 

[Structure]

What a round. Big props for staying with it. In situations like these, I kill to desktop or reload from an old save. Which brings up a potential question: IF you can't get out of this, will you start a new game or try loading from a save to see if you can win using a different strategy? Not sure if you have a policy for this already, but it'd be interesting to see if is possible to win this with a bit different luck (like with the barbs...).

Of course, I ain't saying you lost this yet. I'd be delighted to see it won! Just know I couldn't

 

[ratrangerm]

If nothing else, this ALC was good to give people an idea about the thought process that goes into making decisions, and that sometimes they work, sometimes they didn't.

Case in point: Switching to Buddhism, while on one hand could be used to warm up to the Buddhist, seemed to speed up Catherine's desire to invade. I wonder how much she's at odds with the Buddhist block (don't believe I saw a screenshot of what Catherine's relations with the other AI civs were like) and if that may have prompted her to strike sooner, and if a switch had been made to "no state religion" if that may have delayed her.

But hindsight is 20/20 and all that. Like I said, this ALC, like others, gives you insight into the thought process behind decisions made.

EDIT: I will add one other thing... I'm not the best CIV player around, but I will say this: Forget the settlers, forget trying to reclaiming the land you lost. Get the military going. If you still think you can pull off a win, you should concentrate on keeping the land you still have and not try to reclaim what you lost just yet. Besides, chances are good that Freddy and his Galleon will plop a Settler down before yours are down.

 

[Validator]

Well our worst fears came to pass. Not entirely unexpected though. I guess we're now at the point where we have to decide if it's worth continuing. I don't see any way this game can be salvaged. If we look at the best case scenario (make peace with Cathy without any more losses and resettle the two cities that were razed) you'll still have lost one city, have two other cities restarting pop growth and infrastructure, and your other cities have been seriously hurt by whipping. The situation was already desparate but IMO this makes it hopeless.

If you do decide to continue you might want to go to 0% research to try to build up a cash reserve to buy peace with Cathy. Also take a look at your cities, some are working tiles.

 

[Disco Bandit]

I would argue for the sake of completionism that the game be played until the "you are defeated" screen pops up. However, if this was my own game I probably would have quit a while ago .

A number of different factors... er, factored into this loss. Could it have been played better? Almost certainly. But I think it's entertaining to watch a defeat for once, and let's be honest: who would have won in this? The barbs would have killed me too. I think a number of the shadow gmes which were victories did not have to deal with some of the variables that have confounded Sis.

 

[TheArchduke]

Ouch....

Kudos for still sticking with it, but there was zero what you could do.

In my opinion this game is definetly lost, I don´t see you having a chance to pull yourself out, but I am happy to be proven wrong. In any case, a great game, the ALC were becoming too easy it seemed so far. Not anymore.

Does this mean you will retry Mehmed if things go wrong?


Don´t worry about the shadow games. Knowing that you are isolated right from the start makes a HUGE difference in a game..

 

[KMadCandy]

Case in point: Switching to Buddhism, while on one hand could be used to warm up to the Buddhist, seemed to speed up Catherine's desire to invade. I wonder how much she's at odds with the Buddhist block (don't believe I saw a screenshot of what Catherine's relations with the other AI civs were like) and if that may have prompted her to strike sooner, and if a switch had been made to "no state religion" if that may have delayed her.

i don't think it sped her up, i think she was just being cathy. i do think NSR might have delayed it by taking away any heathen modifier he had from conf or from buddhism (i did recommend going buddhist tho, for buddies). i don't think changing from his own brand of heathen to the group form made any difference though. she's not even at Annoyed in the screenshot where she's declaring, she's only Cautious.

granted, i am biased because i hate her, and granted anybody can declare at cautious, but to me that indicates it wasn't that S got a big fat pile of negative modifiers in a short amount of time. i dunno, last time she was pleased, so he obviously did drop some, and i didn't open the saves to see how big the drop is. i just disagree with you that the change sped her up, i think if you're heathen you're heathen. i do agree that a change to NSR might have delayed her, but i didn't recommend it, i wanted S to have friends, and i think that she (being cathy) would have come at us anyway. see bias mentioned above .

Don´t worry about the shadow games. Knowing that you are isolated right from the start makes a HUGE difference in a game..

oh even the same game played by different people over the space of 40 turns can go completely different, mostly due to luck. i'm in a sort-of SG atm, we all play the same 40 turns in a round and then compare results. this latest round was a doozy. we had results ranging from my happy peacenik universe where nobody knows gunpowder except brennus and bismarck, and no shots were fired all 40 years; a round where cyrus declared war on us (india), we're in a peace treaty now and he has at least 2 riflemen in every city that we can see and we're not yet done researching replaceable parts; and a round where a little green frog from france who shall remain nameless lucked into a mostly-technologically-backwards roosevelt waltzing over the water from the other continent to give him zillions of trading opportunities. i think caber---errrr, mr. anonymous---took future tech 438 with liberalism. in some everybody knows everybody, in some the two continents haven't met yet. this was in the space of 40 turns, we all started from one particular 1000 AD save from the previous round. so we all had the same cities, techs, and political situation. we were weak on the power charts going into it, and we knew that, but i don't think that the 2 or 3 that cyrus declared on did anything blatant to piss him off severely. events just converged that way in their universe, and they didn't in mine.

it's just really fascinating to see how different the same exact game can turn out in such a relatively short time, 1000-1400 AD. it's fascinating to watch S's too but we don't get to see alternate universes, and if we do, the player has prior information about the map and/or the civs in the game already. those spoilered ones turn out different but i'm certain even non-spoilered ones would too. there's luck in civ as in life.

plus there's the moodiness of the AI to deal with. have i mentioned that i hate cathy?

 

[scy12]

i don't think it sped her up, i think she was just being cathy. i do think NSR might have delayed it by taking away any heathen modifier he had from conf or from buddhism (i did recommend going buddhist tho, for buddies). i don't think changing from his own brand of heathen to the group form made any difference though. she's not even at Annoyed in the screenshot where she's declaring, she's only Cautious.

granted, i am biased because i hate her, and granted anybody can declare at cautious, but to me that indicates it wasn't that S got a big fat pile of negative modifiers in a short amount of time. i dunno, last time she was pleased, so he obviously did drop some, and i didn't open the saves to see how big the drop is. i just disagree with you that the change sped her up, i think if you're heathen you're heathen. i do agree that a change to NSR might have delayed her, but i didn't recommend it, i wanted S to have friends, and i think that she (being cathy) would have come at us anyway. see bias mentioned above .



oh even the same game played by different people over the space of 40 turns can go completely different, mostly due to luck. i'm in a sort-of SG atm, we all play the same 40 turns in a round and then compare results. this latest round was a doozy. we had results ranging from my happy peacenik universe where nobody knows gunpowder except brennus and bismarck, and no shots were fired all 40 years; a round where cyrus declared war on us (india), we're in a peace treaty now and he has at least 2 riflemen in every city that we can see and we're not yet done researching replaceable parts; and a round where a little green frog from france who shall remain nameless lucked into a mostly-technologically-backwards roosevelt waltzing over the water from the other continent to give him zillions of trading opportunities. i think caber---errrr, mr. anonymous---took future tech 438 with liberalism. in some everybody knows everybody, in some the two continents haven't met yet. this was in the space of 40 turns, we all started from one particular 1000 AD save from the previous round. so we all had the same cities, techs, and political situation. we were weak on the power charts going into it, and we knew that, but i don't think that the 2 or 3 that cyrus declared on did anything blatant to piss him off severely. events just converged that way in their universe, and they didn't in mine.

it's just really fascinating to see how different the same exact game can turn out in such a relatively short time, 1000-1400 AD. it's fascinating to watch S's too but we don't get to see alternate universes, and if we do, the player has prior information about the map and/or the civs in the game already. those spoilered ones turn out different but i'm certain even non-spoilered ones would too. there's luck in civ as in life.

plus there's the moodiness of the AI to deal with. have i mentioned that i hate cathy?

Actually i think Suisuti got it bad due to mass whipping and not letting his cities grow and bad luck. By the same time he could have a bunch of 17 cities and outproduce the other Ai and so start trading earlier. Ofcourse by the time he could get the other Ai to pleased so they don't declare a war it could be too late if he was unlucky. But because he would be higher in the power graph and started trading earlier it would be more unlikely for war to happen.

 

[DutchJob]

Let's face it: this Ottoman 'Empire' is our Earth's Africa.

Period.

Isolated starts r so difficult. Never did them right. What Cathy did to you was correct. I would love to hear US when WE could play with Turkish axemen while we r wearing Grenadier uniforms...

 

[Rancid Sushi]

Looks like aelf's bad luck is contagious. Man, I freakin hate Catherine. If she's not spreading her legs, she's sharpening her knives. I advocated a defensive pact and bee-line to the Internet before, but it looks like that's not even possible now. I blame the isolated start. I now believe isolated starts are not even worth playing. I would quit now, but if you want to complete the game just for the sake of completing it, more power to you. Winning after all this would make you a CIV god.

 

[lukep]

Actually i think Suisuti got it bad due to mass whipping and not letting his cities grow and bad luck. By the same time he could have a bunch of 17 cities and outproduce the other Ai and so start trading earlier. Ofcourse by the time he could get the other Ai to pleased so they don't declare a war it could be too late if he was unlucky. But because he would be higher in the power graph and started trading earlier it would be more unlikely for war to happen.

Yes, whipping was probably too hard. Also the CE did not really materialize, and a SE would have been better in those circumstances, methink (at least that what shown by my own failed attempt).

However, this was really a difficult start, and i dont think many would have pulled it out.

 

[Hackapell]

Have to give Sisiutl some repect for playing that one out. I probably would have quit as soon as the landing party hit. Anyway, if you plan on sticking it out, I would focus on making the landing party dead on arrival. Forget settling your old cities; if you're quick, you can force them(the new cities, frederick WILL settle on your island) into revolt by putting cultural pressure on them(Time for a culture bomb!)Cities built directly on former sites of cities will be half of the new city's nationality, but the other half will be of the razed city's nationality, in this case, yours. Should be easier to revolt if half the city pop are Ottoman.

 

[cabert]

I would quit, that's a fact.
I did quit in the shadow game for much less

Now seeing a defensive war from time to time can be very enlightening.

 

[jerVL/kg]

Face it, the game is lost. Even if you manage to fend off Catherine, she'll build a new army and re-invade...probably with Cossacks.

You can try reloading from the save right before switching away from Slavery, but I don't think the outcome would be much different.

 

[PublicEnemy]

The options open to you now are erm...erm...

erm...



I admit, it's looking a little bit tricky at the moment.

I actually don't mind seeing a defeat. You and aelf were wiping the floor with the AI before this week.

CIVILIZATION IV: REVENGE OF THE AI.

 

[aelf]

Actually, isolated starts are playable. But you need to get the economy up much faster than S did, preferably an SE at first. It still would be more difficult than a normal game at the same difficulty level, though.

Barbs are a problem, but lots of fogbusting with chariots should do the trick. I guess not starting near a strategic resource was bad luck. Still, I think it wasn't impossible. But, anyway, this game wasn't in vain. It did show us how challenging an isolated start can be and kind of gave us a measure of how soon you need to get your economy going. Impressive effort, and I hope we see a new start soon. Continuing this game isn't worth the time.