COTM 11: Second Spoiler

[ionimplant]

ionimplant,
I don't know if you think it's easy, but if you offer two monopoly techs they'll throw everything on the table. Often one is enough too.

More useful perhaps: use escape to exit the negotiations, leaving the offer on the table. Next time you come in you don't have to go through the "Greetings" window. In the early stages, I often keep "1 gold (per turn)" on the AI side of the table constantly so I can quickly see if they will trade per turn.

thanks!
i think i'm just getting too lazy. actually, easy, for me, should be like the total gold of AI that we can find in mapstatus. each turn, just go to the mapstatus and see what every AI has. we can already do that for the total gold each AI has, but not the gpt each AI has. we still need to click 'n' times, n=number of AI still alive, to find out about that in f6 window, even if we use that 'esc' trick.
maybe i should suggest this to Dianthus (sorry for the spelling).

 

[AlanH]

The problem is that CRpMapstat and CivAssist are intended to speed up access to information that exists in one form or another in the game screens. They work hard to avoid giving you any spoiler information outside of that.

You may be able, by negotiation, to discover that the AI has gpt. However it's not trivial for the utilities to determine that you have a right to this information. You may not have any, or enough, items to offer to get them to divulge their ability to pay gpt. Or they may have spare gpt but not be prepared to pay you gpt because of rep problems.

So I think it's probably a step too far to expect the utilities to give you that information.

 

[DaveMcW]

You can use trial and error to find how much gpt an AI is willing to pay, even if you only have 1 gold to trade.

 

[AlanH]

Do tell - how?

 

[DaveMcW]

Listen to your trade advisor.

"They would be insulted by this offer" - They will pay if you offer (a lot) more than 1 gold.
"They would never accept such a deal" - They don't have that much gpt.

 

[ionimplant]

Listen to your trade advisor.

"They would be insulted by this offer" - They will pay if you offer (a lot) more than 1 gold.
"They would never accept such a deal" - They don't have that much gpt.

True!!! therefore theoretically we should always be able to find out the gpt an AI has, no matter how bad our reputation is and how poor we are (since we always have the map).
does the advisor say "They would never accept such a deal" only when a deal is impossible? eg. signing MPP, RoP due to past reputation hit, not enough gpt, etc. if that's true, may those utility programs can choose to (or not to) display gpt information based on all those parameters of the game.

 

[AlanH]

"They would never accept such an offer" doesn't even always mean what it says. I've seen situations where that response was wrong. When I offered all I had there was a deal, or it became "doubtful", or "insulting". So "never" is not a cast iron indication they they don't have, or couldn't do, what you're asking for.

You are assuming the "never" answer always means the AI has no gpt. But we have no way to determine the truth or otherwise of that assumption unless we have looked inside every save that gave that response. Even then you don't know that it always will hold good unless we have direct input from the game software writer to that effect. Even then he might have made an error.

A utility writer would have to emulate all the internal logic of the AI to determine whether the player should be told what gpt the AI could pay but won't, and I don't believe that's feasible. But I could be wrong

 

[Alexfrog]

Three people (myself included) had undefended core cities taken off them in this game. Very peculiar.

I also had Carthage briefly stolen by a 'Zerk sneak attack mid-Industrial (Ragnar paid for his cheek very dearly indeed, but that's for the next spoiler).

The AI in this game were being very brave, it seems!

I didnt, though I had some inner core cities undefended. I had a MPP with the Vikings throug hthe whole mid and late game. They were the one I didnt attack, and their ships killed a number of dutch ships that might have landed troops on me.

At the very end I took defensive units out of my core cities and disbanded them in conquer cities for shields to rush libraries, so I would reach domination as soon as possible.

 

[solenoozerec]

Predator.
Barbs fixed.

My pre-game thoughts:
Pangaea regent. Last time I played Pangaea regent was COTM5. The game was finished in 490 before MA. Bradleyfeanor finished that game in 50BC. However, I was expecting some handicaps towards human player, like placing us on a tiny mini island or something even worse.

My early in-game thoughts:
Surprisingly start looks very nice, enough space to expand, protected by relatively narrow choking point. There is even a fresh water lake nearby. Even two luxes close by, this is regent, we do not need many. Looks like we are going to have another COTM5.

My middle in-game thoughts:
Three words: what a nightmare. And a smillie:

My late in-game thoughts:
This is fun, though I started to worry about my RL health, like we do not have enough stressful situations elsewhere.

My after-game thoughts:
Why this game was so hard? It reminded me a more challenging version of COTM8. But COTM8 was on demi-god and we did not have any earlier strategic resources. We had to fight for both, iron and horses. Here, at least, iron was for free.
Maybe I shouldn’t take predator? I did not put “predator for ever” in my signature like Dynamic, so I shouldn’t be ashamed for playing open.
I am interested to see the distribution of predators vs open when results will be available. I bet that those who went for military victories did better with open and those who went for research oriented type of victories did better with predator.

__________________________________________________________

How I think this game should be played
ROP to send units searching for horses. Then ROP abuse to get those horses. Most reasonable target – Dutch, before they get their UU.

How I played this game
first spoiler
My goal “fastest domination” sounds very pathetic now.

I think my biggest earlier mistake was not building the Statue of Zeus. I figured it out much later. Even a few fast units would be very helpful. Somehow I thought that we will find horses soon.

I made peace with Dutch in 630BC.
In 310BC Dutch and Mongolia entered MA. I was very concerned about Dutch getting Feudalism soon, I wanted to invade them before they build their UU.

In 290BC I decided to make a palace jump. I did not care what exact town will become a new palace. I just wanted it to be somewhere in the middle of our peninsula. My understanding of a mechanism of the palace jump is that it should go to the middle anyway, so I did not do any preparations and simply abounded Seul. Capital moved to Taejon. No complains. Seul was rebuilt in a moment at the same place. The only thing that I lost was a granary in Seul.

In 230BC I started war on Carthage to get access for incense.

In 70BC Dutch and Mongols got Feudalism

In 10BC I made peace with Carthage. It was very hard to fight against Carthage UU with archers, so I needed to research towards invention first.

10AD Invention and stop research.

AIs were developing and researching faster than I expected for regent, so I decided to mess around a bit. In 30AD I declared on Celts (they looked as strongest and also had ToA, a wonder I wanted the most) I also made alliances with their neighbors, Dutch and Japan.

After upgrading all archers to longbowmen I declared on Carthage again in 210AD. Scandinavia agreed to join me in this war.

In 330AD Mongols demanded invention, I thought it is too much and declined, they declared. I managed to get alliances with Scandinavia, Japan and India.

After I captured all Carthage cities that were known by me, I made peace with Carthage in 350AD. No point to fight with someone if you do not know where they are.

Alps

At this point I reached mountains that were separating me from Celts and Japan:

There the hell begun.
I tried to go through them to attack Celts, but it was too hard. Longbowmen were dying very easily and were not able to fight against armies of Celtic medival infantry. I am not Hannibal neither Suvorov.
But according to Surikov’s “Russian Troops under Suvorov Crossing the Alps”, Suvorov had a horse:

So I tried to go around, I even built walls in New Sokoch’o (never built walls before).
It did not help, I lost this city anyway. Fighting against two civs at this spot with Keshicks flying over those mountains was too much. Therefore, in 460AD I made peace with Moglose who joined us in the war against Celts.
I started to move my longbowmen into Celtic territory via sea, it was safer and faster.

670AD Peace with Celts to rest from war weariness and to prepare for a next round. ROP with Vikings (planning abuse) and Dutch (just to help finances)

710AD Mongols demanded 39 gold and I gave them. Keshicks really scare me.

730AD Traded gunpowder from Indians

750AD ROP with Celts (for eventual abuse)

820AD War on Japan (ROP abuse)

870AD Last Japanese city was destroyed by a single Celtic longbowman.

Loosing and razing own cities as a way to go to Domination

In 910AD the situation become disastrous. Out of the blue Celts ROP abused us! issed: They took 5 cities and killed lots of my units. Obviously it resulted in huge war weariness. Also I immediately understood that fast units are even more necessary during defense than during attack.
I bought extremely expansive alliances from Dutch and Mongolia and declared war on Vikings as a part of the deal. It cost me more than 1000gs in cash and about 115gpt. I also kept raizing and loosing my cities.
In the interval 910AD-930AD I razed 10 my own towns. This is a part of the map showing ruins:

In 940AD I finally got access to horses which were north from Mongolia. Switched longbowmen production to horsemen and got chivalry in 950AD as a part of peace deal with Vikings. The same year I started war on Indians, I had many longbowmen on their territory.

In 990AD Celts started to use cavalry, our knights were still too far. The problem withy Cavalry is that it is impossible to predict where they will attack, they jump from fog of war and cannot even raze cities before they attack.

So I started loosing my towns again. WW was so high, that I had to use entertainers in some of my core cities. Other parts of my shrinking empire got a little bit reddish because of starvation.

It also becomes clear that I will not win this game without cavalry.

1030AD Metalurgy.

1050 AD war on Scandinavia, needed to take flipped Bergen back.

1090 First GL and Military tradition as a part of peace deal with Vikings.

By this time Korea adapted to the situation and started wining a war with Celts.

1150 Captured Entremont with ToA.

Struggling to the very last turn

To give you a flavor of this struggle, here are unedited notes of last 85 years in which I got second, third, fourth GLs and GA:

1200 ToA gave an affect. But it is still far from domination, 53% territory. Even entire Celts would not help. Probably I will need to fight with other civs too. Dutch?

1220 India was destroyed.

1250 It does make sense to start a war on Dutch, their privateers are sinking my galleys with cavalry

1270 Mongolia demanded gems. We gave. What a shame, what a shame, what a shame, we are cowards issed:. Second GL

1275 Celts were finished and it gave us 64% territory. We declare on Dutch. Dutch had rifleman at this point. Third GL. Fourth GL.

1280 We are ten tiles from Domination. We entered Golden Age. At the end of the turn we are two tiles from Domination.

1285 we are 15 tiles from Domination, Dutch took two cities. We are 18 tiles over domination limit at the end of this turn.

1290 Finally

This is the progress of my game:

On a final note I want to say that although I am very unhappy with my results it was probably the most entertaining game I ever played (thank you, Carasu)

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

i've got to retrain myself for Cotm. i keep playing by the RBC rules and don't abuse the AI. I took 2 cities from Carthage before 1500BC and still f'd the game up. thanks solen... for the insight.

 

[solenoozerec]

i've got to retrain myself for Cotm. i keep playing by the RBC rules and don't abuse the AI. I took 2 cities from Carthage before 1500BC and still f'd the game up. thanks solen... for the insight.

I think if AI can ROP abuse us (in this game it was my second time, I was abused before when we were playing China), then why we cannot obuse AI?

 

[killercane]

Easy regent game, they say. Um hum sure. I won by domination in 1230. Ugh. Heres the highlights:

At the MA, I began to pump out swords and MDI and trebs in order to get some horses for my warriors to ride. I began to be thankful here that I had lost the Colossus and cascaded to the Statue of Zeus. Unlike Solenoozerec and others, I left the Celts and Dutch alone and went for Vikings first. I didnt even know the Celts had horses until post Chivalry; they were pretty unassailable anyhow. War went pretty quick, captured most of their island and a spice island city by 300 AD. No problems there, decided to give them a rest and go get those horses ive been meaning to get via galleys through the port of Kazan. Mongols here we come.

310- Go brain dead. Declare on Carthage, who bore me no ill will and had crap for terrain. Totally forgot about going to get horses and all that. SOD really has no problems besides being unholy slow. Unfortunately unit costs are an eyepopping 70 odd gpt at predator settings. Forgetting horses priority was mistake #1. #2 was not building ToA myself since the Celts built it up North and denied me its wonders.

670 sees us finally grabbing the port of kazan in Mongolia and we bog down a bit due to constant whacks by those silly Keshiks, but soon capture Karakorum once we finally get there. Disband some trebs and rush a settler to found on the horses. Rush a harbor in Kazan. We are in Golden Age having built Leonardos in Seoul, coupled with the Great Library and Colossus capture. Mil Trad in 25 turns, which we slow down to build some horsies and rack up lotso gold.

880- Having built up over 40 horses, we upgraded and really began wrecking people. Slaughtered many Samurai but lost some cavs on counterattacks. Began the long march west through hills and mountains. Note to Mongols: thanks for never hooking up your SECOND source of horses and generally not building roads anywhere. Really, it was appreciated.

1100- Pretty much owned everything west of the Celtic alps + 3 dutch cities on the mainland and STILL not at domination. So THATS what all those islands are for, raising the dom limit huh. Begin island hopping to the west from former indian lands with a salty crew of 2 cavs and a 2 cav army to fit on my caravels. Having not got a leader all game I had 3 in the closing portion, 2 of which were used to rush libraries. How useful. Cash rushed more libraries and settlers.

1230- Finally domination mercifully comes.

Thoughts: Should have bypassed Carthage and maybe even Vikings for horses as first priority. Would have made hundreds of years difference in the end date. Should have attacked the Dutch sooner, I figured I wouldnt need their land for domination but oh how I was wrong. A long, hard slog but a good game and map! If Id have known that it would take this long I would've researched to tanks and gone conquest on everyone. Im wondering what the quickest conqest does turn out to be, if as in my game the celts get to cavs they are tough.

 

[Darkness]

Wow, guys...
Reading your struggles with conquest/domination type games makes me really happy that I (widely known for compulsive warmongering ) decided to go for a peaceful victory type for this Regent level game...

@Karasu: You're really evil, you know that? No horses nearby is, IMHO, the worst (most difficult) lack of resouces a game can show! Excellent way to make a lower level game interesting!

 

[Denniz]

1.22f - Open Class

AA Link

Middle Ages 270BC - 1170AD

310 AD Now at war with Carthaginians
510 AD Carthaginians Eliminated

580 AD Korea created Sun Tzu's Art of War in Namp'o
590 AD Now at war with Vikings
840 AD Vikings Eliminated

920 AD Korea created Knights Templar in Wonsan
960 AD Now at war with Japanese
960 AD Korea gained great leader Yi Song-gye
1030 AD Korea started golden age
1190 AD Korea created Smith's Trading Company in Wonsan
1220 AD Japanese Eliminated

 

[Erudine]

Open

My goal in this game was to see what a stack of Hwacha do.

So i built lots of catapults and trebuchets for upgrades, and then workers to make the roads for them. And bunches of mideaval infantry. With the workers and artillery units being so easy to build, I think I ended up over-building. I had far too many, and was constantly strapped for cash, which meant I couldn't research fast to metalurgy. (in the AA post, I mentioned having 2 workers per city... apparently too many, but I felt like I needed it with the crap terrain.) So I knew I'd want to do big upgrades and not have the cash for them, so when I lost out on Statue of Zeus I switched to Leonardo's. Eventually got that and made it easy to upgrade.

I noticed a stack of 20 Hwacha and a Army of 3 MI was totally invincible. The AI won't attack an army (unless it's in a city, and I lost one that way), and those Hwacha really are pretty unstoppable, just so darn slow, which is bad for war weariness. Took me forever to clean out the Celts and Dutch and get the horses there. I ended up in a really bad fight between the Mongols and the Celts at the same choke point the above poster mentions... Those Keshiks were beastly, but didn't defend that well. Keeping my troops out of range and counter attacking with Hwacha worked well defensively, but I couldn't mount much of an offense against the mongols, so eventally I bought a peace.

I ended up getting domination with cavalry (and a tiny bit of help from some railroads, too) around 1300 ad, for about 8500 jason-points, which seems to be my average.

ISO: Help on how to win before 1000 ad.

 

[ionimplant]

solenoozerec, great write-up and a fatastic picture (except for the horse)!
i ended up not building a signal knight or cavelry in my game... i'll talk about my unsuccessful attempt to get horse in the final spoiler. now that the GOTM42 is up, when will the final spoiler come up? i just hope it'll do before i start gotm42 tonight since i'll quickly forget everything about cotm11 then.

 

[denyd]

With defensive troops now arriving in his border cities and Ancient Cavalry on station in potential hot spots, Wang Kon felt more secure and when he rebuffed a Dutch demand for the monopoly he held on currency, the declaration of War was almost welcome. The Dutch city of Middleburg that had been settled on ancestral Korea lands was quickly acquired and by trading Monarchy, a somewhat common tech to the Celts he was able to keep the Dutch busy defending their common border with the Celts while Korean galleys delivered troops to Dutch islands and captured three Dutch cities and added wines to the luxuries of Korea.

With the completion of Knights Templar in Seoul in 390 AD, Korea would now be able to go on the offensive against Carthage, a peaceful neighbor who just happened to be in the wrong place. When the alliance with the Celts had ended, Wang was able to sign peace with the Dutch in return for one of their final two island holdings. It was now time for Korea to expand and Carthage was in the way. With war honorably declared the Korean troops began marching on Carthage’s cities. Before the first battle could be fought, the Mongol’s demand for gold was rebuffed and war was declared. Wang Kon quickly contacted the Celts who were busy conquering the Dutch and arranged to ally with them against the Mongols for 275 gold pieces. One by one the proud garrisons of Carthage were conquered until soon the city of Carthage was in sight. Hannibal’s offer of gold and the city of Hippo were sufficient to delay the inevitable.

Meanwhile back in Seoul a university, cathedral and colosseum had been rushed and a last second switch was required when the Mongols completed the Sistine Chapel in a wonder cascade, leaving Seoul with JS Bach’s Cathedral. That was followed in 950 AD by the completion of Copernicus’ Observatory. The war between the Mongols and Celts had been raging for over 200 years when Korean troops finally reached a Mongol city and with the capture of Hovd, Temujin was willing to send nearly 200 gold pieces and his world map for peace. Finally in 1000 AD, the entire world was at peace.

The time of peace was brief as in 1010 AD, with the expiration of peace with Carthage; the Korean troops began their final offensive against the Carthaginian Mercenaries and in 1130 AD with the fall of the tundra city of Cirta, Carthage were gone. Pyongsong’s quest to build a new palace was rerouted the same year to complete Smith’s Trading Post and in 1160 AD Seoul completed Shakespeare’s Theater and Korea discovered Magnetism and entered the Industrial Age. [Editor’s note: Seoul Culture 6026 and 75 cpt]

 

[ainwood]

So I think it's probably a step too far to expect the utilities to give you that information.

One other complicating factor that I have noticed in my trials is that the AI appears to be allowed to use deficit spending... Running huge negative GPT even with zero in the bank.

Needs more analysis, but I think that with the reputation system difficult to determine (in-save), as well as the -ve GPT (and I am not 100% sure about the trigger that allows GPT deals), I think that this would be very, very difficult anyway.

 

[ionimplant]

One other complicating factor that I have noticed in my trials is that the AI appears to be allowed to use deficit spending... Running huge negative GPT even with zero in the bank.

how can you know this? how AI spend their money has always been a big mystery to me... very often getting all the gpt from them (like 200gpt) will cripple their research completely but sometimes it doesn't.... and how all of a sudden they have a lot of gold from nowhere and then it'll be gone for no apparent reasons (lux trading, tech, etc.) and someone mentioned that AI doesn't use the slide bar and tackle the happiness problem by using entertainers. is this true?

 

[Renata]

One other complicating factor that I have noticed in my trials is that the AI appears to be allowed to use deficit spending... Running huge negative GPT even with zero in the bank.

Needs more analysis, but I think that with the reputation system difficult to determine (in-save), as well as the -ve GPT (and I am not 100% sure about the trigger that allows GPT deals), I think that this would be very, very difficult anyway.

I think they do pay the prescribed penalty for doing so (loss of one unit and one building per turn, with the cheapest and the farthest-away (in the case of units) going first). This may be partly why the penalty is so relatively light (particularly at later stages of the game) -- in order to keep the AI from completely collapsing when it makes an inevitable bad deal.

Back in the early middle ages of my game, the Dutch sailed an archer in a galley all the way around my east coast, then along the south coast to the designated* landing site three tiles west of the starting-area lake. They dropped the archer off, and I made a mental note of it for the next turn. Next turn, I looked for it and it was gone.

*I'm playing Always War, which has been ... interesting. *bops Karasu upside the head for making it such hard going* The AIs have only ever landed in that one spot, even after the inland towns I assumed they were going for at first acquired better defense. More on my game later when I have some time, although I haven't kept detailed notes.

Renata