BTS 3.13: Infinite City Sprawl 01 - Manhattan Empire

[shyuhe]

I was hoping to avoid the MM nightmare. I will try a cease-fire with GK and Wang to capitulate Cyrus then re-declare on the last two guys.

And the tribute screen was hilarious. I definitely laughed at that one. You realize you took redundant resources right? I will try to mop this up in 15 turns but I'm not sure if it's possible.

 

[Betruger]

I will try a cease-fire with GK and Wang to capitulate Cyrus then re-declare on the last two guys.

That's good idea, I totally forgot about cease fire option.
If it works then the win should not be far away, as we'll be able to use Persian roads to move our troops into GK's lands quickly

 

[mystyfly]

Well, nice mop up there Betruger. Most of those WW will be because Cyrus has the SoZ. This would've been an early target in the war.
We could also take peace with Cyrus (make sure enought units are in mongol land) and vassalize him after GK. What with Wang (I can't look at the save atm)? Would he vassalize now? He's been crippled for ages.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Great work, Betruger. Thanks for the detailed report to compensate for my lazy ).

We are really just mopping up here, so not much to be said. Just keep capitulating AIs until victory is ours, I guess. I will write up an overall report of our strategy and success in the first post eventually.

 

[mystyfly]

speaking of the first post - might want to change our leader's name to Asoka

 

[Betruger]

Well, nice mop up there Betruger. Most of those WW will be because Cyrus has the SoZ. This would've been an early target in the war.

Oh right, forgot about that one
Well, he probably has it somewhere inland anyway, and the speed of conquest here was limited only by the movement of units, so no big deal I guess.
I might have razed it already because at one point WW dropped considerably

We could also take peace with Cyrus (make sure enought units are in mongol land) and vassalize him after GK. What with Wang (I can't look at the save atm)? Would he vassalize now? He's been crippled for ages.

We could do that but it'd take 10 turns of peace first, and then few additional turns of war later.
I have a feeling that the win is just next door. No need to prolong it.
Wang is a vassal of GK.

 

[shyuhe]

phew. That was a lot of units to move around. It actually only took 7 turns to mop up. Not bad. I was actually more worried about completely crapping out our economy as we were nearing -60 gpt at 0% science I started to build the SoL in Delhi just to be safe.

IT: I take a cease fire with GK. Capitulate Cyrus

I had to change his offer from Pasargadae to democracy. The city didn't fit in our grid and he was more than willing to give us tech. I should have tried for two techs now that I think about it. Oh well. We then re-declare on Khan.

I also gift replaceable parts + steel to our vassals.

Turn 256 - I gift rifling to our vassals. I'm such a nice guy! Too bad they're all still furious at us. Something about razing their cities...

Turn 257 - RR is completed. I don't think it's going to make a difference but I'm shocked at the research times with 0% science. MT only takes 5 turns, combustion another 8!

Turn 261 - after more city razing, Genghis has finally had enough.

I think I took out his "sod" somewhere. I couldn't tell as it was smaller than our fourth sod. Yes we had that many stacks running around...

So now the screenies (I took a bunch because they were very different from a normal game):

Score:

Power (check out the drafting!):

GNP (you can see the effect of drafting):

MFG (also suffered from the pop loss ):

Kills (and the number of cities founded/razed):

The number of cities founded was the most surprising. In vanilla/warlords, I used to finish games founding 3-4 cities And this was over 10x that number!

Demographics:

And the final score...

Spoiler :

I've attached the save 2 turns out from victory (closest auto save) if you want to play them out yourself. It's pretty trivial but a nice addition to your personal hof. The final grid on the map is... just so pretty...

While Firaxis did a good job killing ICS in vanilla/warlords, the introduction of the AP/UoS/SM combo has reinvented ICS I think. It's really only viable on a land heavy map but just spamming cities endlessly definitely works. The mid-game power of drafting is just ridiculous if you have 30+ cities as you basically get 300 rifles (roughly) after 10 turns.

Our final headcount was 58 rifles, 64 infantry and 87 cannons. I didn't bother counting axes/maces. And in case anybody is wondering, yes you can vassalize a civ that has a vassal as well. It instantly frees the vassal (obviously) and doesn't even kick your units out of the former vassal's territory. So I just redeclared on Wang the same turn that I capitulated Khan to prevent unit teleportation. We could probably have eliminated him in another 4-5 turns.

Thanks for a great game all and team! And a brilliant SG idea Khan (not to be confused with the one we capitulated).

 

[Kylearan]

Hi,

I love that power graph!

Thanks for a nice read.

-Kylearan

 

[mystyfly]

Nice game guys. I really enjoyed the game (really great variant Khan!). Concratz to us I guess

 

[r_rolo1]

First of all, congrats... nothing like a reminder of good ol'CivIII times

But a question

The final grid on the map is... just so pretty...

You used a D2 grid ( math talk for a square grid ) .... that is not the most efficient way of packing cities in terms of maintenance. A distorted L2 grid would had been better because of the way that Civ IV measures distances:
XCXXCXX
XXXXXXX
XXXXXXX
CXXCXXC
XXXXXXX
XXXXXXX
XCXXCXX

Nothing serious ,but it would had saved some coins

 

[stuge]

But it wouldn't have looked so pretty!

Great game, all. A real eye-opener to the power of religious wonders.

ICS is back, only you've got to do it smart and in the proper circumstances. Asoka seems to be the perfect match for this strategy.

 

[Arathorn]

Fantastic, interesting game. Not close, really, which is very telling. Nicely done. And, I agree, that final map grid is awfully pretty.

Limit of drafting 3 units/turn does slow this a bit, but only a bit, because so many cities are also producing. Just a ridiculous number of cities. Great stuff.

Arathorn

 

[Betruger]

Good job team
It was a really fun ride, I enjoyed it immensely.
Definately a unique game in my CIV portfolio

 

[LordKestrel]

Great read, I'm going to have to try this sometime

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Excellently played, team. Great reports and great success in playing the variant, instead of working around it. Even having run test games and practiced this strategy quite a bit, I was shocked to see it work out as well as it did. I was prepared to throw Muskets and Catas at Riflemen, but we wound up with both production and tech working in our favour.

I am planning to write an executive summary, hightlighting what was going on, for instance successful Oracle->CoL, early shrines, winning AP, speed of expansion. I was wondering, if the team is still around, what would we have done differently without our variant rule?

We could have kept more cities and expanded more intelligent, maybe seized borders and backfilled, but as it stands, it seems our pattern of expansion was almost ideal.

 

[mystyfly]

I was wondering, if the team is still around, what would we have done differently without our variant rule?

One thing we could've done different was avoiding the oracle > conf sling. Instead we could settle more cities more agressively. Then we would use the first or the second GP to bulb Theo to get the second religion and build the AP instantly. It's all about balancing expansion and economy. With the early buddh. Shrine we could've been settling more cities (as we teched so fast). If we played either the Arabs or the Egyptans who both have UBs that give priests slots, we would've been getting our crucial GPs much earlier. I think Ramsses would be stronger than Asoka (He has a great UU as well. In the early game, we would've needed nothing but WCs for barbdefence and also vs an early AI rush, the WC would do a great job. However, we'd lose the organized bonus which was huge. But either the Obelisk or the Madrassa would've generated that much GPP to get more shrines earlier so it'd somewhat balance org (and the later arriving courts) out. Also, a crucial point in our economy were the USak, AP, SM. Ind helps ensuring them. So Ramsses it'd be. Ramsses on Immortal anyone?

 

[stuge]

I'd be willing to give this a go on immortal. Maybe it wouldn't be such a ridiculous
walk-over.

Ramsesses might be good. Who's org/ind in BTS?

 

[mystyfly]

I'd be willing to give this a go on immortal. Maybe it wouldn't be such a ridiculous
walk-over.

Ramsesses might be good. Who's org/ind in BTS?

glad to hear that. I somewhat missed the challenge

org/ind is FDR (no early UU/UB ). I still prefer ramsses. Also, America doesn't start with Mysticism. Obelisk gives +2 priest slots. That makes 3 if we build a Temple. Spi is also very nice as it gives +100% on temples (rember: these temples will be +2 gold, hammer, beakers, +1 happy, +1 culture ). And we'll probabely build many of them again.
We could go with Buddhism/Hinduism, Christianity (bulbed) and Islam again (partially bulbed). Let's just hope we'll find stone again..

 

[stuge]

Let's hear it from the rest of the team. Ramsesses on immortal?

 

[shyuhe]

I don't see how Ramesses is a better leader than Asoka for this variant. Organized is crucial to getting up courthouses in a reasonable amount of time. Spiritual is also necessary because the cost of changing civics goes up very fast with the number of cities that we run (I think). Industrious forges are not very useful but the wonder bonus helps for... oracle, AP, UoS, SM. And SoL if you make it that far. Without organized, I think you'll completely crap out your economy as you transition to the medieval era as you won't be able to land grab as fast with slower courthouses.

I'm not sure that seizing borders more aggressively than we did would have been very productive. We were sending out settlers at a very good pace and we started warring shortly after we finished settling our land - that suggests a good settling pace.

I think oracle --> CoL is a strong move for this variant. Looking back, we had more than enough cities by the time we were preparing for war mostly because we built troops from slaving/drafting. I would like to try doing this variant with a complete FE as I think it's definitely doable if you get 1-2 shrines. That together with the SM will provide more than enough gold for your cities and rep+mercantilism can fuel your midgame research.

There are three weakness that I see in civ 4 ICS: one is that you have to finish the game before it hits the late game as I doubt you'll keep up with lategame cottages. The other is that it's really only possible on land heavy maps. If this were a continent game, I doubt ICS would work nearly as well. The third is that you can't do anything (other than a courthouse) to reduce the # of cities maintenance cost. That cost became really high towards the end of the game and may have actually crashed our economy if left unchecked (granted we were close to domination so that's part of the reason).

Without our variant rule, I think we would have spaced cities out a little further and not abused the whip as hard as we did. Also probably wouldn't have drafted as hard either (towards the end, I was drafting regardless of how recently I had drafted in that city as long as it met the pop requirement). But that's basically trading off short-term power for long-term growth/commerce, which is the proverbial trade-off in civ.