[CIV4] Replay #9 - Beating Deity

[Seraiel]

Woah. 15h of work for 1.5h of video. I really hope that people will show interest, be kind and finally begin appreciating that I'm working to improve their games.

Not enough positive reactions to the upcomming video will mean, that the rest of the project I'll make it a lot easier for myself.

Current status: Video being rendered (takes between 1 and 2h in which I cannot use my PC) , afterwards upload (almost 6GB of video so 3h minimum) .

 

[Seraiel]

Posted a thread in the S&T subforum in order to raise some attention for this video, like suggested. Let's see if fighting ignorance again is something hopeless.

 

[Seraiel]

Episode III:


Link to video.

Version without music: (still uploading)


Link to video.

 

[dohh]

I'm btw. hoping for feedback on the 2nd episode, I'm currently having a hard time finding motivation to record the next episode without people having reacted yet.

I really do appreciate Your hard work on learning all details of this wonderful game and sharing them with us. You have teached me a lot. I rarely comment, because I have very little to add. You (and some others) are somewhat so effective, that its scares me.

Just a hint: when strategic games reach to that level, where You are now, its hard for many people to follow it. I personally lost motivation to Heroes 3 at some point for that reason: I loved playing against humans, but they had brought the game to such level, that You needed to squeeze everything (and more) out of lemon. I would not call the result as a lemonade Eventually I knew exactly when enemy arrives and how many units he has abroad - that was very easy to quess - maximum possible for that date.

I respect You games a lot, but the real reason why I havent joined HoF, is that I can not find attractive to micro every city every turn and play only top starting locations, while picking enemies and trying to avoid any mistakes. If I dont do that... I have no chance, because You all play ridiculously effectively.

Also, I think element of luck is very important in games. If t was up to me, I would organize HoF so, that all players start from same strating game, which would make HoF much more objective and challanging. Maybe I would not make only the best date as a criteria, but combination of date, score and maybe techs. Also, players could get some rating points for HoF games, that dont go only for winner, but runner-ups as well. Rating should be normalized somehow by number of games played.

As HoF is challange against human, I personally dont find attractive to run against finish date only. I know, many average players think similarly.

 

[Mitchum]

Also, I think element of luck is very important in games. If t was up to me, I would organize HoF so, that all players start from same strating game, which would make HoF much more objective and challanging. Maybe I would not make only the best date as a criteria, but combination of date, score and maybe techs. Also, players could get some rating points for HoF games, that dont go only for winner, but runner-ups as well. Rating should be normalized somehow by number of games played.

You just described the Game of the Month games. If starting from the same save and comparing yourself to other players with respect to fastest finish and/or highest score floats your boat, drift over there and check it out!!

 

[Seraiel]

I really do appreciate Your hard work on learning all details of this wonderful game and sharing them with us. You have teached me a lot. I rarely comment, because I have very little to add. You (and some others) are somewhat so effective, that its scares me.

Just a hint: when strategic games reach to that level, where You are now, its hard for many people to follow it. I personally lost motivation to Heroes 3 at some point for that reason: I loved playing against humans, but they had brought the game to such level, that You needed to squeeze everything (and more) out of lemon. I would not call the result as a lemonade Eventually I knew exactly when enemy arrives and how many units he has abroad - that was very easy to quess - maximum possible for that date.

I respect You games a lot, but the real reason why I havent joined HoF, is that I can not find attractive to micro every city every turn and play only top starting locations, while picking enemies and trying to avoid any mistakes. If I dont do that... I have no chance, because You all play ridiculously effectively.

Also, I think element of luck is very important in games. If t was up to me, I would organize HoF so, that all players start from same strating game, which would make HoF much more objective and challanging. Maybe I would not make only the best date as a criteria, but combination of date, score and maybe techs. Also, players could get some rating points for HoF games, that dont go only for winner, but runner-ups as well. Rating should be normalized somehow by number of games played.

As HoF is challange against human, I personally dont find attractive to run against finish date only. I know, many average players think similarly.

If this is really how many players think, then you have wrong information.

HoF is a spot for trying to maximise things, but I've looked through various games HoF players, and in every single game, I've found erros where improvement would have been possible.

I took the game you're seeing in the video, because it's one where I made only very very very little errors in it, but i. e. only changing the map from Boreal to Pangaea would be enough for a good player to beat me.

Still, nobodoy will hopefully choose to do so, because there are simply a lot of other games in the HoF, that could be beaten with even less effort or according to your argumentation, with less skill and more joy while playing, have a look at these:

1850 AD Conquest on Small / Quick
1420 AD Culture on Huge / Normal
1350 AD Diplo on Huge / Normal
Almost all Highscore Slots
Very many (classic) Spaceraces
Almost all Time Victories
Very many Space Colonies

So to me, there are several possible options.

Also, and that's something I hope which will be understood:

Better results can be gotten by improving the way, so that it makes fun itself. Better way = better results. All other things remain the same. Improvement is fun and has a lot other good sideeffects. I'm working towards the goal of becoming a better human for quite some time already now, and life has really become better.

 

[Mitchum]

I just watched the third video. Nice work so far. I'm interested to see how this game goes. Your English is very good and understandable... even with the music.

BTW, kudos for creating a music version (seems to be your preference) and a non-music version for the hearing impaired. If it requires a lot of extra work and bandwidth, I think everyone would be fine with the non-music version. It's not like you get a free Great Artist for including the Music...

WT will be dissappointed to see that you chopped a forest at the 50:16 mark one single turn before learning Math... thanks for explaining why you did it!!

 

[sinimusta]

Also watched the 3rd one. I just want to say that this a unique and fine project when it comes to civ4 youtube playthroughs. There is a lot of rather weak playing in youtube and even the better players like tmit and az play very fast so play is far from optimal. Showing playing on deity level with every decision is well thought is just something that can't be found anywhere else at least imo. Although at times it takes patience to watch. I understand why you're not playing this game live, I can imagine the pressure that would cause and how playing live could disrupt.

Things I would have liked to hear more about:
-Using the great person: I think how to use them is a rather big decision compared to some worker decisions or worker micro. While bulbing MC might have seemed an obvious choice at that point of the game to you I think you could have told the viewers why you did it. Maybe you could also have speculated what would you have done with a spy as the GWall was build for the spy points after all.
-The decision to sell monarchy. Mainly I wondered why you didn't trade it earlier for about 70-80 gold, since you said monarchy is a tech AIs always trade and a lot of AIs already had it. So I would have been afraid that the opportunity to get something for monarchy would have been lost and the AI would have gotten it.

I started to get a bit afraid that the last 10-15 minutes would be silent after you said you wouldn't talk anymore. I was pleased to hear you breaking the silence. Please don't leave long periods of silence in your videos, it's just a lot more enjoyable if you explain what you're doing and why or maybe explain the big picture. Main point is that the commentary is just as important as the actual game to make the videos a good watch. And yes I watched it with the music, but the music doesn't really replace the commentary.

 

[Seraiel]

I just watched the third video. Nice work so far. I'm interested to see how this game goes. Your English is very good and understandable... even with the music.

BTW, kudos for creating a music version (seems to be your preference) and a non-music version for the hearing impaired. If it requires a lot of extra work and bandwidth, I think everyone would be fine with the non-music version. It's not like you get a free Great Artist for including the Music...

WT will be dissappointed to see that you chopped a forest at the 50:16 mark one single turn before learning Math... thanks for explaining why you did it!!

TY Mitchum.

And even though it's not like I got a Great Artist for including the Music, including the Music is aswell helpful for me in order to "get into the flow" and talk more freely, as it also makes me more sort of a GA. Basically Art is an extremely important factor in my life, I played a lot of instruments during my youth, producing videos is almost like "taking Music to the next step" .

WastinTime will hopefully get over his absolute doctrine of "never chopping before Maths" , but I will hopefully learn out of situations like that one and become even more patient, precise and careful in my decisions.

Also watched the 3rd one. I just want to say that this a unique and fine project when it comes to civ4 youtube playthroughs. There is a lot of rather weak playing in youtube and even the better players like tmit and az play very fast so play is far from optimal. Showing playing on deity level with every decision is well thought is just something that can't be found anywhere else at least imo. Although at times it takes patience to watch. I understand why you're not playing this game live, I can imagine the pressure that would cause and how playing live could disrupt.

Things I would have liked to hear more about:
-Using the great person: I think how to use them is a rather big decision compared to some worker decisions or worker micro. While bulbing MC might have seemed an obvious choice at that point of the game to you I think you could have told the viewers why you did it. Maybe you could also have speculated what would you have done with a spy as the GWall was build for the spy points after all.
-The decision to sell monarchy. Mainly I wondered why you didn't trade it earlier for about 70-80 gold, since you said monarchy is a tech AIs always trade and a lot of AIs already had it. So I would have been afraid that the opportunity to get something for monarchy would have been lost and the AI would have gotten it.

I started to get a bit afraid that the last 10-15 minutes would be silent after you said you wouldn't talk anymore. I was pleased to hear you breaking the silence. Please don't leave long periods of silence in your videos, it's just a lot more enjoyable if you explain what you're doing and why or maybe explain the big picture. Main point is that the commentary is just as important as the actual game to make the videos a good watch. And yes I watched it with the music, but the music doesn't really replace the commentary.

You really understood a lot.

Thx for writing that my video showed somewhat "unique play" , gives me confidence that other viewers will also begin to understand, what I wrote some hours ago, so that "making the way enjoyable" in order to achieve better results really is the way of getting better, so that people understand, that playing 5h and only proceeding by 5T can be even more giving than finishing a game and afterwards seeing, that their 1 game actually is only 1/20 of that kind.

Regarding playing "live" : I tried, and you're right. The pressure was incredible. I personally think I can handle pressure in specific really well, but I simply broke. Even knowing of an audience is already a pressure many find very hard, but trying to be perfect while others are watching and giving critique, *lol* .

Interestingly, I talked about both types of Great Persons when I recorded the first day of audio-commentary. I found, that I completely lost my track and once was talking about things I absolutely didn't want to talk about, I deleted everything. I believe that "getting on the tech-trade-train" with users seeing, how I get all techs for 1 invested techs should be understandeable, and that they see that getting a Great would most of have created a need to produce spies (= waste ) while it would have gotten me more techs but also later.

Selling Monarchy would have gotten me diplomatic bonuses, but I've become careful to give the AIs Monarchy, because it's a pre-requisite to Longbows. That info should definately have been in the video.

The last I unfortunately don't understand completely. Maybe I've become too much "de-humanized" over the past years, or never really felt that connection to humans or humanity. I think I don't have to mention, that my thoughts towards humanity aren't too positive in general. I know that humans can be very positive though.

 

[Pangaea]

Have watched the video too (without music ), and it was great. Surprised I got a mention in there, but thanks for that

Excellent point about Monarchy being pre-requisite to longbows, that is certainly a good reason to not trade it around too much. I don't recall who you gave it to, but did you prevent to give it to people you intend to wage war on?

You also mentioned that you gave some techs, like monarchy and monotheism (because the AIs tend to trade it freely) for +4 trade relations. Does this last long? Given they are fairly cheap techs I mean. I see that these values will often quickly deteriorate in the game, especially in the beginning, and assumed this was connected to the amount of beakers you have 'given' them.

One advice I have though, is to edit out most or all of the saving. It breaks up the video and it's not very interesting to see you save your game 2-3 times a turn.

I've always been unsure on when to whip the granary, so it was good to hear it's best when the foodbar is at most half-full. Will incorporate that into futures games.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Just finished watching video #3. I liked your concept of the Technology Train. I have compared it to surfing where one needs to keep trading for technologies to stay with the technology wave generated by the AIs collectively and thus leverage the AIs research bonus to maintain technology parity with the fastest AI techers. Bulbing Metal Casting with the Great Engineer was really the best way to get on technology wave. Great explanation of Asoka's 20% threshold for trading monopoly technologies. Too bad your attempt to become Friendly with an AI by giving away mathematics wasn't quite enough. Your explanation of the Technology Train and how to keep it going was excellent.

Fantastic video #3! I hope we can see video #4 soon.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[pepe26]

I love instructional, educational videos on video games that involve a lot of theory!

That said, I had to quit half-way through part 1 because I just cannot stand your english. I'm 100% sure I could learn a bunch from you! The aspects you talk about are definitely important and many of them I have not thought through yet... but the slow pace of commentary and the utter monotony of our rhetorics ruin it for me completely.

If you were to improve this by a lot, you could probably more than triple the feedback in this thread and viewers on Youtube. I'm not trying to be an arsehole here, really! Please try to take the comment as helpful suggestion rather than misinterpreting it as a flaming posture.

Also, there are some people who seem to be able to enjoy it regardless, so I don't wanna push too much...

 

[Mitchum]

Wow, I wouldn't call that constructive criticism but more of an insult really. How do you expect someone to change they way they talk? Based on the fact that there is so much information to digest, both visual and audio, the pace of speech actually makes it easier to take it all in.

Seraiel is not a native English speaker (and from your location I assume you are not either). I would think that you would actually be impressed that he's trying to do this in English in the first place.

 

[Seraiel]

I love instructional, educational videos on video games that involve a lot of theory!

That said, I had to quit half-way through part 1 because I just cannot stand your english. I'm 100% sure I could learn a bunch from you! The aspects you talk about are definitely important and many of them I have not thought through yet... but the slow pace of commentary and the utter monotony of our rhetorics ruin it for me completely.

If you were to improve this by a lot, you could probably more than triple the feedback in this thread and viewers on Youtube. I'm not trying to be an here, really! Please try to take the comment as helpful suggestion rather than misinterpreting it as a flaming posture.

Also, there are some people who seem to be able to enjoy it regardless, so I don't wanna push too much...

Maybe you'd like to simply skip to Part II or III, I became a lot faster in those.

Generally I'd like you to think about this:

"Doing only the right things but those slowly is a lot harder, than being faster, but making errors all along the way."

What I offer, are "routines" that work "amazingly well" and that "don't cause any further problems" . They're the result of over 10y of hardcore gaming, and they're on a level that is so hard, that I have problems not breaking on it.

Try to see, that I'm trying to give "only the good" or even "the best" to you.

Being faster, offering more, is really one of the most simple things I could adapt to, but really, that wouldn't be towards your advantage.

Seraiel

 

[shulec]

Incredible work Seraiel! Keep it coming!

P.S. I was interested to hear you are in the medical field! I am too, in a way. Glad to see some non-IT guys.

 

[neilmeister]

I am still halfway through episode I, but I am not going to skip. Enjoying it greatly, I haven't tried the music version, I just assumed it would distract me from following what was happening.

 

[cseanny]

Nuked.

 

[Pangaea]

Don't get it either. I like that things happen a little more slowly, so it's possible to follow what happens without pausing every two minutes. With AZ and TMIT, it's pretty much impossible to follow everything, as micro and such is done in 0 time, often with shortkeys too. First 50 turns flies by, and by the end of it I've no idea what actually happened, but suddenly AZ have 3-4 cities and loads of workers. Err, I guess he did something right In this video it's easier to follow what happens, he explains many key decisions and why he does X instead of Y, which is great for learning. KUTGW!

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I just want to chime in saying your videos are the best! I really like the no music version; your voice is very clear. Regarding the music version: the problem is my ears, not your voice.

Looking forward to episode IV!

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Seraiel]

Just lost all my motivation of working towards this project. People giving nothing is bad enough, but this breaks the barrier.