Challenge-XIV-02

[enKage]

2nd attempt. 1935. even worse start than before ecxcept plainhill to settle on (forest deer, 2floodplains, no commerce resources).

Libbed radio, communism selfteched

This time I skipped national park strategy, chopping forest earlier gave some crucial things earlier. Traded for health, coal and alu. State property all the time from the moment I had all cottages I wanted worked and watermills built. It should be around 1920 or even earlier but I got 6 or 7 great artist in a row on 20% odds at final stage, so I had 1 less golden age in crucial stage.

A lot of hammers into spaceship without destroying cottages at final stage was huuge (3 turns into engine).

I am sure with a little more food/ 2 more floodplains I should beat 1900 AD

 

[dohh]

Thanks for detailed answer!

1) Didnt think Alpha was so important. In one try I went alpha and missed oracle therefore. So I sticked with strategy to beeline civil service from Oracle.

2) How do You see, when did I get EDUCATION? My logic in building so many wonders was to replace Philo trait with wonder points and use civic for faster building.

3) is map generator with Buffy or I have to download it separately? never used it...

4) Hmm... You tell no great wall... But the barbs were quite annoying. Even on that level I got 4-5 warriors to invide and pillage relatively early. If I build no GW, no BW for axes and tech no archery, how should I stop them?

Wont ask about late game by now, as I still have a lot to learn from early

I think you mostly have to improve your tech path and chose some AI that will actually help you (trade techs, resources and gold) and not declare on you. Lymond has some good points, too.
- Alpha should be your top priority early on. You can skip most Ancient techs and trade for them. That way, you not only speed up your own research, but also the general tech pace on the map.
- Get your multipliers up early. Education is a key tech. I got it late, you got it 30 turns later. If you play a non-PHI leader you also want to adopt Pacifism asap (right after Philo, not 1000 years later).


I’m usually not very good at OCC/Space games, and I’m sure someone will beat my date. My game was far from perfect.

Here is what I did. Feel free to ask, if something is unclear:

Start:
I wanted at least one good food resource, one commerce resource, some forests and a river. After running mapfinder for an hour I got:
1pig, 1 grass cow, 2 gems, 2 grass hills, 5 forests (with potential for more forest growth), riverside capital
Not the best start ever for OCC, but a pretty good start for the Oasis map script. I don’t use mapfinder very often for normal games, but I pretty much always use it for OCC. Finding a good start is crucial here.
Opponents were the usual suspects. De Gaulle (bad guy, everyone's worst enemy) and Peter (bad guy and decent trading partner) and a bunch of peaceful AI.

Early game:
I did not play this very well until ~500AD and made many poor decisions:
- I built TGW which probably wasn’t needed, as some have pointed out. I also built it before a library which made it even worse. Fortunately, my first GP was a Scientist and I could get my academy up early. Unfortunately, my 2nd and 3rd GPs were Spies (10-20% odds). Yuck! I really missed those scientist hammers early on.
- My early techpath was very unfocused. I obviously got masonry early for TGW. For some reason I also teched BW before Alpha when I was not planning to chop or run Slavery. I guess I was hoping for a copper resource in my BFC, but no such luck (4th ring copper). My techpath should have been: AH->Mining->Writing->Alpha->Maths->CoL->CS (Oracle)
- I teched Literature for the NE after Oracle->CS, but did not plan to build TGLib. Not sure, if that was a mistake. Without NE, I could have gotten the Pyramids up earlier to solve my happy cap problem. I probably should have gone for earlier MC or Philo instead of Literature.
- 600AD Oxford is very late for OCC. Too late!

Mid game:
- I libbed Bio (1110AD) and built the NP with 6 forest preserves (8 eventually after forest spreads). Teched Medicine right after Bio and ran Environmentalism until the end of the game.
- My neighbor Joao declared on me, but he quickly made peace again after my 2 maces and 1 musket killed his mini stack.
- Those settled spies were not totally wasted, as I could see everyone’s research. I saw some AIs were teching Nationalism when I was teching towards Superconductors. I gambled a bit and hoped I could trade for it and still build the Taj. Got Nat it in trade, but missed the Taj by a turn. I also saw that Freddy and Asoka teched Constitution for me, but I had to delay Corporation (Corps!) by several turns to get it.
- Founded Cereal Mills and Mining Inc. and traded for some grains (3gpt each) and metals (4gpt). I had to constantly sell techs to afford them. Corp yield was something like 15 food and 8 hammers.
- My research maxed out at ~1300bpt. Not great.

End game:
- Lizzy had 4 or 5 aluminum resources in my game, so I could easily trade for it after giving her Industrialism and its prereqs.
- I thought that production would be a huge bottleneck in the end, but it turned out that was not the case. I guess all those settled Engineers I popped helped a lot. I left most forest preserves up while building space ship parts and timed the chops so that I could squeeze in another thruster before Ecology (last tech) and build life support in 1t. Launched with 4 thrusters and 1 engine (14 turns travel time).
- I only ran 3 GAs, since I had missed the Taj. The last one I started with the Fusion Engineer. It ended the turn after Ecology, when my space ship launched. Nice!

 

[enKage]

dohh

1st warrior axplores east / west to find nearest neighbour, fortfy on defensive tile between you and other civ (barbs do NOT spawn on the area 2 tiles in each direction from any unit and do not spawn on tiles next to cultural orders. In Oasis you have usually bootom of the map near too, so generally you need 1 warrior in proper position west, east and south. After alpha you can go two archers to protect north. and 1 wandering archer inside your borders. That is enough for all my games, is far cheaper than Great Wall and has its uses later (militia happines in Hereditary Rule).

Also try to put all your improved tiles in one area. It is easier than to protect with an archer all your improvements when some barbs sneak into your land.

----

I switch to pacifism in first golden age usually, so AFTER I use organised religion bonus for building Forge+NE+Uni+Oxford+MoM. Do not chop any forests before Forge/Beauro/OR. Earlier buildings you can easily build with whipping and mines only. Forest chop after Forge+Beauro+OR is 60 hammers, so Uni+Oxford are easily chooped.

2) How do You see, when did I get EDUCATION? My logic in building so many wonders was to replace Philo trait with wonder points and use civic for faster building.

Build only wonders you need. Basically my set is Oracle Mom and Apostolic Palace. Other are situational. Mids are too expensive to build it without Stone, GLib and Parthenon are nice but often you have to make a choice, Taj Mahal is worth building if marble is possible (for example by trade). Hanging Gardens - usefull if you dont go for early NationalPark. Other wonders are not worth mentioning.

) Didnt think Alpha was so important. In one try I went alpha and missed oracle therefore. So I sticked with strategy to beeline civil service from Oracle.

Up to monarch/sometimes emperor Alpha is the most important tech early. Basically teching here should be (AH or Hunting or none depending on what food is in BFC) - Road - Pottery - Writing - Alpha - Priesthood - Maths - Col - Oracled CS. After Alpha you can for sure get BW for Writing and also Myst + poly by trading, archery, hunting, basically ALL you skipped.

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Take Mansa to your game always in space race. He is not trustworthy, can declare war when you dont expect it, but he trades away every tech he owns. I use him later to get Combustion, Rails and other usefull techs I skipp when go deep into other branch of tech tree

 

[dohh]

dohh

Take Mansa to your game always in space race. He is not trustworthy, can declare war when you dont expect it, but he trades away every tech he owns. I use him later to get Combustion, Rails and other usefull techs I skipp when go deep into other branch of tech tree

Thx for advice!

PS: Mansa is even so untrustworthy, that he can actually outrun You in successful game of OCC. My best try so far was ruined specifically by Mansa, where I had to switch to army to stop him, as he was going to win cultural... What a waste of time...

 

[Pollina]

1) Didnt think Alpha was so important. In one try I went alpha and missed oracle therefore. So I sticked with strategy to beeline civil service from Oracle.

2) How do You see, when did I get EDUCATION? My logic in building so many wonders was to replace Philo trait with wonder points and use civic for faster building.

3) is map generator with Buffy or I have to download it separately? never used it...

4) Hmm... You tell no great wall... But the barbs were quite annoying. Even on that level I got 4-5 warriors to invide and pillage relatively early. If I build no GW, no BW for axes and tech no archery, how should I stop them?

1) Alpha almost always speeds up the Oracle, if you get it asap. I believe our problem was the set of AIs you picked. Most of them are very reluctant to trade techs.

2) Your log can be found here. Pacifism is especially important for non-PHI civs, since bonuses stack additively. A PHI leader gains 50% GPP from it, a non-PHI leader 100%. An IND leader only gains 17% wonder production from OR (or actually less (11%) if you account for forge and Bureaucracy bonuses).

3) link

4) You can build the Great Wall, if you feel safer that way, especially with Roosy. Just don't build it before a library like I did. Barbs start without archery. You can easily defend your capital with a couple warriors until you get it up.

 

[lymond]

Ok..someone help me with this little mystery. Why in the blazes can't I trade for aluminum with an AI? It doesn't even show up. Gifted him IND and watched as he improved 2 aluminums. Never saw them in trade screen nor could ever trade for them. Frustrating.

I haven't had any issues with barbs much without GW, but it can boil down to luck with how close the AIs are and how fast the AIs expand. I haven't even had metals in any of my games.

(events suck balls, man. I keep forgetting why I hate them so much until I'm stupid enough to turn them on for a game. All negative events including a lost forest when I didn't have the gold and lost buildings including an Observatory and Library, which is pretty darn devastating. Don't see why anyone would want to play with events...pure crap.)

 

[cas]

Ok..someone help me with this little mystery. Why in the blazes can't I trade for aluminum with an AI? It doesn't even show up. Gifted him IND and watched as he improved 2 aluminums. Never saw them in trade screen nor could ever trade for them. Frustrating.

I had the same issue in one of my attempts. Would be nice to know why.

cas

 

[cas]

Build only wonders you need. Basically my set is Oracle Mom and Apostolic Palace. Other are situational. Mids are too expensive to build it without Stone, GLib and Parthenon are nice but often you have to make a choice, Taj Mahal is worth building if marble is possible (for example by trade). Hanging Gardens - usefull if you dont go for early NationalPark. Other wonders are not worth mentioning.



Up to monarch/sometimes emperor Alpha is the most important tech early. Basically teching here should be (AH or Hunting or none depending on what food is in BFC) -Road - Pottery - Writing - Alpha - Priesthood - Maths - Col - Oracled CS. After Alpha you can for sure get BW for Writing and also Myst + poly by trading, archery, hunting, basically ALL you skipped.

-------

Take Mansa to your game always in space race. He is not trustworthy,can declare war when you dont expect it, but he trades away every tech he owns. I use him later to get Combustion, Rails and other usefull techs I skipp when go deep into other branch of tech tree

bolding/red mine.

I find it odd you want to waste hammers on AP. At best, that is a situational wonder depending on the religion spread. In my games so far, Mansa or one of the friendly religion civs techs Theo and trades it to me. Then trade Theo to the civs that are in the religion you want to build the AP and not the AI that are in a different religion. That gets you the hammer bonus from temple/monast 90% of the time. As for the votes, if you are building Globe, you can just defy whatever the first vote is...usually open borders with all members. They will keep bringing up that same resolution rather than AP victory vote (in my experience, anyway). And you just keep defying it. Globe eliminates the happiness penalty. I did build UN to control the votes on that...but think it might have been wasted. Depends how the AI are split.

edit: on AP if you are trying to avoid the AP victory vote by building it under a religion that will not spread to everyone (say Taoism and you are the only one has Tao) I can think of better ways around that with high success rate (not guaranteed) without spending the hammers on AP.

I would skip road/pottery and go straight to Alpha in your tech order with Lincoln. Maybe with Roos you need the extra happiness from a road on gem/fur ? Road/pottery are easy to trade for once you have Alpha. I'd rather have Alpha sooner.

Additional input on Mansa. Put Mansa and DeGaulle in the north. Almost zero chance MM will declare on you before you get him to friendly by trading techs / OB / peace / religion, etc... Don't trade enough with DeGaulle to get negative diplo mods with the other AI. DeGaulle basically becomes everyone's worst enemy.

cas

 

[lymond]

UN should never be a factor at all at this level, as well as AP. If you don't have AP religion then Diplo won't come up anyway.

Building AP is a huge waste of hammers. Mids is not.

 

[cas]

UN should never be a factor at all at this level, as well as AP. If you don't have AP religion then Diplo won't come up anyway.

Building AP is a huge waste of hammers. Mids is not.

UN can be a factor if you are trading all your techs to the AI so they will research things for you late in tech tree. With 9AI (8 really since DeGaulle is in my game) you can still get a few late techs from the AI...even on noble. If they research a tech you need like ecology but won't trade it, you still get a discount on research yourself.

Once I have lib, I trade the AI (except DeGaulle) all the techs I have minus one.

If you are keeping the AI dumb by not trading mid-late techs, I don't think you are optimizing the game settings here.

Whether UN is necessary is still dependent on the individual game, though.

cas

 

[dohh]

All negative events including a lost forest when I didn't have the gold and lost buildings including an Observatory and Library, which is pretty darn devastating. Don't see why anyone would want to play with events...pure crap.)

Sometimes very good things happen as well Like reduced inflation or free GPs etc. Im not sure, but if unexpected peace via helping wounded units is also random event, then random events in the big plan bring more good than harm IMO.

 

[lymond]

Sometimes very good things happen as well Like reduced inflation or free GPs etc. Im not sure, but if unexpected peace via helping wounded units is also random event, then random events in the big plan bring more good than harm IMO.

Don't get me started, but I assure you that you are wrong on events

@Cas...yeah, I give away a lot of techs to the AI about the same point..just enough so I have stuff to trade with, although that is usually not a problem regardless. Still UN has not come into play. AP could be a problem if Religions don't balance out on the map, but given the distances on Oasis, that is usually not a problem

 

[AgedOne]

Submitted a much more respectable finish date - 1994 - so at least I can now go out in public again

Some of this was through searching for a better start: I got one where I could at least settle on a river-side plains hill. I had gems, only one food resource, but quite a few forested hills and plains.

I still kept to my basic strategy (Yes, Gt Wall!) including Pyramids, Gt Library, Oracleing Civil Service and got to Education before 0 AD, which was nice.

I concentrated on growing my city fast, and settling as many Gt Scientists as I could.

My worst mistake? I pressed 'next turn' and accidentally researched Lib way before I was ready . Had to take Nationalism, so I at least got the Taj and a long GA.
But ouch!

 

[lymond]

so at least I can now go out in public again

We were concerned about that...glad you are among the living

one food resource

At least 2 strong food resources is a must..I prefer at least 3 myself..at least another decent food resource. Lots of flat green forests can make up for that some though.

(Yes, Gt Wall!)

I think GW is a mistake for this game. Make sure you add 10 AIS including 2 or 3 IMP characters and you should not have too many problems with barbs.

My worst mistake? I pressed 'next turn' and accidentally researched Lib way before I was ready . Had to take Nationalism, so I at least got the Taj and a long GA.
But ouch!

I've done that on more than one occasion. Very frustrating, especially when you have very well laid plans that are going smoothly until that happens. Thing is, Taj is so easy to get here anyway..you can usually build it quite late.

Anyway, my last game I actually lost Oracle>CS to Justinian, who is very much an Oracle threat on lower levels, especially when he gets marble - which he did here. I still like him in these types of games though. Interestingly I had my best game yet without CS sling, but for other reasons as well. CS sling and wasted Oracle turns probably cost me about 20 turns.

Pre-1900AD is very feasible.

 

[AgedOne]

We were concerned about that...glad you are among the living

Thank you for noticing
I'm very aware that I am extremely rusty after a couple of years of not playing Civ IV, but I'm also frustrated when I look back at my old games. I wasn't one of the best even then, but I was a lot better than I am now!

At least 2 strong food resources is a must..I prefer at least 3 myself..at least another decent food resource. Lots of flat green forests can make up for that some though.

I agree. I keep referring to Game 7 of Challenge 1, which I took part in in my previous life! This was at emperor level, and was on an Inland Sea map. I know that emperor can help your tech progress compared to the lower levels. The fact is, I managed a 1946 finish (and wasn't very happy) and the leaders were all around 1860-1880.

I think GW is a mistake for this game. Make sure you add 10 AIS including 2 or 3 IMP characters and you should not have too many problems with barbs.

I'll take the point, but I hope you don't mind if I build it . I just find the fog-busting and fighting off the occasional ones who sneak through to be such a bind that it distracts me from what I'm supposed to be doing.
Call it an idiosyncracy of mine!

I've done that on more than one occasion. Very frustrating, especially when you have very well laid plans that are going smoothly until that happens. Thing is, Taj is so easy to get here anyway..you can usually build it quite late.

It was a real 'head-slap' moment for me, I can tell you! I think was distracted by having had an expendable unit (a missionary who was doing a bit of exploring/spying for me) killed. I just went and hit the space bar without doing any of the normal checks. This time it was costly.
I certainly didn't want to take Nationalism. It didn't figure in my plans at all. I was going for Biology from Liberalism.

Anyway, my last game I actually lost Oracle>CS to Justinian...

Ouch! Yes, I do get a brief chill down my spine as I approach Oracle. I shouldn't be beaten to it, but someone - like Justy - with some marble can do it. And that's a game down the drain probably!

 

[lymond]

My major head slapper was a fubarb at Fusion. I had a GM and GS (or something) and waiting for that free GE to run that final Golden Age for the home stretch. I also was very close to generating some GP. Like you, just got distracted or wasn't paying attention. So the free GE pops from Fusion, but - in my mind - I'm thinking I just generated a GE. Almost in a passing thought, I think to myself - "oh great, well I'll be getting another guy soon so I'll just settle this one - don't need two". But that was the free one and I popped another GS from the city right after, which didn't help. so no final GA for me. Probably shaves maybe 3 or more turns I guess. That and the Oracle loss would have easily put me around 1890AD I think.

 

[AgedOne]

My major head slapper ...
... Probably shaves maybe 3 or more turns I guess. That and the Oracle loss would have easily put me around 1890AD I think.

That sounds so familiar! And painful!
We get into these mental routines while playing a particular type of game (I know I do, and maybe you do too) where you are almost, like, putting tasks into slots ready to be done in a few turns time. Stacking up the Gt People is just one of these routines.
Most of the time, the routine works and everything is kept in order.
Just once in a while, the whole machine jumps a gear ... and you do something so stupid that you can't believe you were actually sober and awake at the time


You'll be having another go sometime? Getting that sub-1900 date up on the boards?

 

[lymond]

Probably ...especially after Pollina beats it, which is guaranteed ....will try some others for now

 

[cas]

Anyway, my last game I actually lost Oracle>CS to Justinian, who is very much an Oracle threat on lower levels, especially when he gets marble - which he did here. I still like him in these types of games though. Interestingly I had my best game yet without CS sling, but for other reasons as well. CS sling and wasted Oracle turns probably cost me about 20 turns.

Pre-1900AD is very feasible.

So put Justinian in the south away from the marble.

I think Lymond knows this already, but you can set which AI are in the north and which are in the south on an Oasis map.

Player(1) always starts in the south. Player(2)...or first AI...however you want to look at it...is in the north...Player(3) south...Player(4) north...etc.

I use some industrious civs in my game and keep them in the south for that reason.

cas

 

[lymond]

Ha..yeah....I knew that you can do that and possibly get AIs you want closer too, but I've never known the formula. That helps a lot. Justine will be in the south next time...no marble for you

What is the logic on IND civs?