ALC Game #4: Egypt/Hatshepsut

[cabert]

Me, I'm a peacenik. It doesn't matter if monte and nap grow faster than you;you've got more land and more cities to compensate.

for a peacefull catch up you'll need:
- biology
- farms everywhere in new cities first (little cities grow faster than big ones), leave those cottages where they are. Don't forget windmills on those hills, they give you food too.
- frigates to sink the gallions you'll finally see coming.
- hanging gardens are already built AFAIK, but if not that would be the big thing

EDIT: the good thing about going for a razing is you don't even need to be more powerful than your opponent. You land your troops next to the most fragile city, burn it down in 2 turns, go back to your ships and heal.

 

[Sisiutil]

In times of peace, prepare for war.

Makes sense. I'll grow my pop and bee-line for Biology, but Chemistry will let me build those Frigates and Grenadiers just in case. I'll send a Caravel or two back across the pond to scout the weakest cities.

 

[Oralelk]

Oralelk (where do you people come up with these board names?!? Pigswill, Oralelk...),

Actually, it's an utterly harmless acronym of my real name.

Yay for a potential cultural win with Vicky! If the situation allows it.

Now, I'm looking forward to the rest of your Hatty domination, with or without .

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Actually, it's an utterly harmless acronym of my real name.

If by acronym you mean anagram, me too.

 

[pigswill]

Pigswill comes from:
1)the quality of my posts
2)when I learn to play civ well pigs will fly

 

[Araqiel]

Well my silly name comes from a variation of an angel name that serves as my Dark Angel Grand Master's name, and my internet handle as well.

What me a geek ?

 

[Oralelk]

If by acronym you mean anagram, me too.

Argh. Of course, anagram. (Or perhaps I'm Spanish nobility and have a name that consists of seven words, so "Oralelk" can really be an acronym.)

This is what happens when you post late at night.

 

[Zombie69]

Talking about nicks, do you think Zombie69 would be good "friends" with Oral Elk (emphasis added)?

 

[pigswill]

This started off as an interesting detour but now its getting silly. What's happening in ALC#4?

 

[vormuir]

A point that nobody has raised yet:

If I understand correctly, "population" is not about how many points of city-pop you have, but rather about the notional population of your cities... that is, the millions of people on the statistics page.

We don't normally worry much about this stat; the game occasionally flashes messages ("you now have one million people") and we shrug and move on. But it's this, and not city numbers, that give the win.

This is important because notional population does not scale directly to city pop!

I'm not sure how it works in Civ IV, but in earlier versions it went something like this:

City population

1 = 5,000 people
2 = 10,000
3 = 20,000
4 = 35,000
5 = 50,000

...and so forth. Until a city of 20 or so = 1,000,000. That's from memory, and approximate, but I'm sure someone around here has the exact numbers.

Now, this has an important consequence: It means that adding a pop point to a big city has much more impact than adding one to a little city! Growing a city from 15 to 16 probably increases your notional population as much as founding 10 new 1-point cities.

So, you should focus on increasing the population of your largest cities. If you do this aggressively, you'll win faster.

So, if you're still building settlers, don't build them in the big cities. Build them in smaller ones, even if it takes longer. And consider messing with land improvements. I know that knocking down a town to build a farm is incredibly painful, but consider things like replacing mines with windmills. Also, don't forget that State Property gives you +1 food from workshops and watermills!


Waldo

 

[Killroyan]

Very good point indeed Vormuir. Other point you can consider is removing some specialist to get that extra growth going if population is ever going to be a problem. Windmills is a very good chance for instance later in the game. You don't need the production then so badly anymore but the food is always nice. But the crux is at the domination of the land which will be a little too short if I am not mistaken to get total domination. Is the plan now to start cities on the polar caps??

 

[Sisiutil]

Round 12: To 1846 AD, Part 1

Good thing I'm posting. The decorum in here rapidly degenerating. And here I had naively assumed that the numbers in Zombie69's board name referred to his birth year, not his favourite...you know...

Ahem. Well, this round was not without its bumps and thrills, gang.

I was happily building farms and researching towards Biology in anticipation of cruising to my Domination win. Relations with both Napoleon and Montezuma were very good (both were "Pleased" with me). In fact, Nappy even dropped by and offered me a rather surprising trade:

Wow. I mean, doesn't he know what Replaceable Parts leads to? Well, I'm no fool, if he wants to trade a pre-req to a key military tech for a civilian tech he should have had by now, I'm all for it.

However, I had reason for concern. It seemed both my rivals had finished researching--gulp--Astronomy. And they were rushing my way with Galleons chock-full of Settlers and defenders:

Heh heh heh, frustrated, eh, Nappy? Sail back home, loser! I've sewn up the entire continent! There isn't a single tile of land for you or Monty to squat upon! Not one speck, not one lousy foothold...

Whoops.

Okay, I missed that bit. Here I got all obsessed with settling Iron Island just north of it and forgot all about this strange little spit of land. I just really hoped those weren't the three tiles I needed for the 64% land mass I needed. At least Monty would find it hard using that as a beachhead with those mountains in the way.

I sent my Caravels to do some more scouting around the other continent, just in case I needed to invade someone to get my final scraps of land. I figured it would be highly unlikely--there were a good dozen or so tiles of southern tundra that my cities would claim when their borders expanded for the third time. I figured I had it in the bag. Provided, of course, no one decided to do something crazy, like, say...

...load up a bunch of ships with military units and sail them my way.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!​

Okay. Breathe. Don't panic. I mean, hey, I just finished researching Chemistry the turn before, I'm building my very first Grenadier and my very first Frigate. They won't be done by the time Nappy lands his forces, but I'll manage. I have some gold, I can upgrade my War Chariots...to Knights, I guess, since I'm several turns from Military Tradition. And just because my units are dispersed all over my continent and will take several turns to reach the invasion point, well, that's all part of the challenge, right?


Right?





Yeah, that's what I thought.



Panic!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!​

To be continued...

 

[Hans Lemurson]

Hmm... I've been playing out more of your alternate history Sisiutil, the "What if you had actually gone for Code of Laws when I wanted you too" scenario.

Basicly, I'm farther along in tech (but a bit behind in settling) from where you are now, only I'm in 1600. It may partially be due to my more efficient management of the war (London in 400AD this time), but it is also partially due to the 10-15 turns you lost in the Alphabet fiasco (time delay + economic ripples).

• On the religious front, I founded the 5 religions not claimed by the Aztecs, have built 4 shrines, and 90% of my cities are at least Confucian and Buddhist.
• On the wonders front, I pretty much got all the ones you did, just about 20-30 turns sooner.
• On the GP front, I am running Pacifism, and Barcelona is churning out 57GPP/turn, while Thebes and Madrid chug along at 26 (purely from wonders). I am 5 turns short of getting my 9th Great-Person (not counting the music freeby) my last (intended) Great Prophet in Thebes.
• On the economic front, I am turning out +52Gold/turn at 60% science, as the cottage-spamming of my jungle-cities approaches fruition.
• In science, I just started researching Education, and will complete it in 6 turns. Nappolean has only Gunpowder on me, which I can take in 3 if I chose.

Basicly, the differences come down to the economic and military choices we made. I finished conquest (and thus started development) sooner, got courthouses (and Forbidden Palace) sooner, got a Shrine sooner (GP from Stonehenge), spread my religion sooner (had more incentive to), and cottage-spammed the jungle sooner. Every time I got one step ahead of you economicly, it sped me up further and further, to where I am now.

The fundamental differences between our policies, are that (a)I fight wars harder, (b)I like jungles more, and (c)I spread my religions more voraciously.

If you would like, you can review what wickedness I have wrought: View attachment 129824

 

[Sisiutil]

Round 12: to 1846 AD, Part 2

Okay. More deep breathing. Calm down, analyze the situation, find a way out. Look at the screen, analyze every detail...

Hey, wait a minute...Napoleon's a Muslim!

I'd almost forgotten that he'd converted several turns back. Seems he finally managed to spread Islam enough within his cities to justify it. And now that he's thrown off the yoke of that usurper Montezuma's cruel Jewish overlordship (I can't believe I just wrote that either), he's looking to expand his little empire. At my expense.

I wonder how his neighbour feels about Napoleon's recent conversion? Hmmmm...

Well, that was cheaper than I thought it would be. And darn effective, too. The war trumpets sounded, and my Caravel suddenly lost sight of that armada. It was nowhere to be seen in the ocean off my east coast. Where did it go?

My other Caravel located it:

Heading straight for Aztec territory, eh, Nappy? Best of luck.

At first I worried that the AI would indulge in its usual "phony war" behaviour--declaring but doing nothing. And I worried, as well, that this would not be enough to tie down Napoleon and dissuade him from invading me. Of course, since my ally in this situation was Civ IV's resident psycho, I should have known better. Within a couple of turns, messages started appearing about one French city after another falling to Aztec invaders. No, Napoleon was not going to be coming after me anytime soon. Phew!

Meanwhile, I kept spamming farms, micromanaging tile assignments, and now that I had Military Tradition and Chemistry, I was building Grenadiers, Cavalry, and Frigates in my larger, established cities, while my newer ones kept focusing on population-increasers like Granaries. All this production got a huge boost, as did my bottom line, a couple of turns later:

Check the GA-powered jump in revenue in that screenshot compared to the previous one. +128 GPT!

And I finally started producing Great Prophets:

I got one in Heliopolis, and another a few turns later in Barcelona. So Memphis and Alexandria got their Confucian and Taoist shrines, repectively, and my income got a shot in the arm. Meanwhile, I kept spamming Hindu missionaries out of Elephantine, so London--which now had all the commerce multipliers built--would reap and magnify the benefits. I could hardly wait until I built Wall Street there; I was saving a few forests for chopping to rush it.

And I wasn't done with monetary benefit wonders:

Nappy beat me to the Spiral Minaret, but not to this. Thanks to Versailles, two shrines, my GA, and the spread of Hinduism, I could finally run research at 60% without a deficit. Yay me!

Then Monty asked me to cancel my deals with Napoleon, who was still, in spite of my costly meddling, "Pleased" with me. To keep Monty happy, since he was clearly winning that war and growing ever more powerful, I agreed. My economy was now able to absorb that loss of revenue.

Monty wasn't done, though.

You know, Monty, you're doing quite well on your own. You've captured three or four French cities already. Whaddya need me for?

To keep him happy, and earn the "mutual military struggle" diplomatic bonus, I agreed. I now had enough modern forces to withstand an invasion, if it came. I didn't really have any intention of attacking Napoleon, though. Ironically, after my worrying about Monty being a "phony war" ally, that was now a role I was going to take on.

But the turns kept rolling by and I still hadn't won. I now had Biology, and by further micromanagement of tile assignments, I was able to get the necessary population. But I still needed less than 1% of the planet's land.

I decided to take a dual approach, knowing one or the other would get me my win. I started switching builds in my southern cities to theatres, then started running artist specialists (helped by the Caste System civic), in an attempt to hurry their border pops. I started researching Constitution, then Democracy, so I could run Universal Suffrage and gold-rush any other cultural buildings I needed. The Statue of Liberty would give me a free Artist specialist I could run.

Meanwhile, I started moving my veterans to my eastern seaboard cities, where I began building Galleons. If I couldn't get the necessary population and land to win on my own continent, I'd wrest what I needed from Napoleon.

This is where things stood in 1844, with my veterans gathered in Nova Roma and Ironclam Flats, awaiting their upgrades and the completion of the Galleons:

OOOOOOOoooo, just a hair shy of the win! Would invasion be necessary after all? Would I finally be putting my City Raider III units back into action?

Nope.

On the next turn, Greenwhich expanded its borders, claimed several otherwise-worthless tundra tiles, and I had my DOMINATION VICTORY!!!



And in 1846! First time I've won a game that early. I never did get around to building Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty, and a lot of other things. None of it matters. I won!

On to the post-mortem...

 

[Killroyan]

Nice nice nice well done. Clap clap clap.

 

[Sisiutil]

Post-Mortem

First off, a few screen shots from the end-of-game summary.

The score chart from the entire game:

Ah-ha, so it was Asoka who had the misfortune to be on the same continent as Monty and Nappy. Poor bugger, he never had a chance.

And power, from the last 50 turns:

I should mention that I also managed to get Rifling from Monty for a couple of other innocuous techs. That, Grenadiers, Cavalry, and Frigates all account for my sudden surge at the end.

The demographics:

Top 5 Cities and Wonders:

Heh. All Egyptian! I love it.

The stats:

I don't think I've ever built that many cities in a game before. And I razed nearly as many; most of them were barb burgs.

And my final, adjusted score and place in history:

OH YEAH!!!



That is, by far, my highest score ever, as I thought it would be. It's more than double my score from the Qin game, which was the highest before this one! Un-freakin'-believable. And even with all those mid/late game economic problems. Too cool.

Anyway, I've said a lot already about the main feature of this game, the UU and its use in those wars, as well as the main problem, which was economics. And my main mistake, which was going after Alphabet before Code of Laws. I'm interested in everyone else's perspective. So post away!

 

[Hans Lemurson]

Wow, it looks like the little iron-island may have pushed you over the edge, since it looks like all of the land on your continent is taken.

Viva la War-Chariot!!!!!!

Was it cool to see the lightning-conquest of the continent in fast-forwards?

 

[vormuir]

This has certainly opened my eyes to the power of the War Chariot.

As you said, it's been neglected because it isn't so obviously powerful. People overlook the key point: it's cheap, so you can crank out hordes of them.

I now think it's one of the best UUs -- right up there with Praets and Redcoats.


Waldo

 

[Betafor]

vgj, You dont know me i've been following but not posting . Viccy next?

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

I think one of the most interesting things about this game is that Montezuma turned out to be a late game contender. I've never seen that happen before. Never. He's always competitive in the beginning, but during the middle ages he gets passed by due to his lunacy. Of course, there were a lot of factors that conspired to help him, but it's still interesting to me to see that he can make his strategy work under the right circumstances.