[C3C] COTM155 Babylon Emperor -- Discussion and Spoilers

[Fergei]

I'll play in my usual sped up automated way and see if I can attempt a 100k cultural victory, but expect to fail quickly at that and go for space race (both of which I've never achieved). I am hopeless at judging when a cultural victory has gone out of reach though but attempting it shouldn't jeopardise a space victory.

I will be spamming these bowmen like nobodies business early doors to dissuade aggression from neighbours. They have defensive bombard don't they? So I can activate that by pairing them up with warriors to be cheap barbarian worrying duos.

 

[CKS]

Why will you pair them with warriors? The warriors won't defend, as the bowman has defense 2. You could send out pairs of bowmen.

While building a bunch and going barb hunting might be worthwhile, I expect I'll be to lazy to do so.

A 100k victory doesn't really go out of reach until very late in the game, and it is pretty easy to accomplish if you focus on it, especially if you are willing to go to war at first. Get a large plot of land. ICS it and pop-rush culture, using ToA (if possible) and pyramids to give culture and population growth. Wait a while. Towards the end you can end up gaining thousands of cpt. Feudalism in wartime is great, because you can pop-rush with foreign citizens, speedily removing flip risks and building culture quickly.

However, while a 20k game is reasonably compatible with a space victory, I don't think 100k is. The maintenance on all those cultural buildings is crushing, so you can't research quickly once you start to get a bunch of them. Ideally you decide before well before education whether you are going for space or 100k, since you don't want to learn education if the ToA is available for culture. (On emperor you can probably get the AI to build the ToA and the pyramids on your continent for you.)

 

[Fergei]

Why will you pair them with warriors? The warriors won't defend, as the bowman has defense 2. You could send out pairs of bowmen.

While building a bunch and going barb hunting might be worthwhile, I expect I'll be to lazy to do so.

A 100k victory doesn't really go out of reach until very late in the game, and it is pretty easy to accomplish if you focus on it, especially if you are willing to go to war at first. Get a large plot of land. ICS it and pop-rush culture, using ToA (if possible) and pyramids to give culture and population growth. Wait a while. Towards the end you can end up gaining thousands of cpt. Feudalism in wartime is great, because you can pop-rush with foreign citizens, speedily removing flip risks and building culture quickly.

However, while a 20k game is reasonably compatible with a space victory, I don't think 100k is. The maintenance on all those cultural buildings is crushing, so you can't research quickly once you start to get a bunch of them. Ideally you decide before well before education whether you are going for space or 100k, since you don't want to learn education if the ToA is available for culture. (On emperor you can probably get the AI to build the ToA and the pyramids on your continent for you.)

Of course, bowmen have defence of two so wont use bombard if paired with warriors. Thanks for 100k tips. I'll see if can give that a bash and try to make the AI attack each other throughout the game to lower their focus on cultural buildings.

 

[LaSalle]

Just finished up my game. Great starting position for the capital. I won’t give any details because I don’t know if spoilers are allowed. I could not figure out what the Guards of the Seven Tablets do or what is special about the tile. Did anyone else figure it out?

 

[Fergei]

Just finished up my game. Great starting position for the capital. I won’t give any details because I don’t know if spoilers are allowed. I could not figure out what the Guards of the Seven Tablets do or what is special about the tile. Did anyone else figure it out?

Yeah, spoiler conditions are laid out as the weeks go on, so you did well to keep it to yourself. I've been enjoying spring too much to start yet.

 

[Captain_Jack]

I could not figure out what the Guards of the Seven Tablets do or what is special about the tile. Did anyone else figure it out?

I should work in Washington. I lost control of my budget one turn and my Guards were disbanded!

 

[Più Freddo]

@Captain_Jack At least you had some use of them!

@LaSalle They keep Barbarians from destroying the mine. Their special ability is Enslavement. And they look good!

Sorry for not having announced the spoilers. These are hard times for a free spirit. So much evil and stupidity!

 

[Più Freddo]

Middle Ages

Spoilers are allowed covering the game up until reaching the Middle Ages. The results of getting and trading bonus technologies at this stage are a permissible topic as well.

No spoiler information from after fulfilling the spoiler requirement is allowed!

 

[Più Freddo]

Industrial Times or Game Submitted

Spoilers are allowed covering the game up until reaching Industrial Time or having submitted the game. The results of getting and trading bonus technologies at this stage are a permissible topic as well.

No spoiler information from after fulfilling the spoiler requirement is allowed!

 

[Lanzelot]

No other food bonuses are on the map except Wine and, I guess, Sugar. No Wheat, no Cattle. For no one.

Just started the game and discovered a wheat floodplain only 6 tiles away?!?

Edit: and a cow as well! I see no one else mentioning this, am I playing a different game?!

Regarding Captain Jack's crash on the victory screen: I think we should accept the autosave and count it as victory, and not require him to play an additional 11 turns (for another election, I assume?)

 

[Più Freddo]

Oh, yes, there were those. I must have forgotten them when I wrote the blurb. I looked now, and it seems I missed a few more. Sorry about that. I think I had the intention at one point but didn't follow through. The Wheat Floodplains were intended as a sort of bounty. I should have mentioned them, but it plain slipped my mind. I think the general strategy should not be affected. There really are very few food bonuses!

 

[Captain_Jack]

COTM 155 Babylon AAR
First off I’d like to thank Piu Freddo for making this game and map. It was interesting and even exciting. It has been my most enjoyable Civ game to date. There were interesting wrinkles and added excitement, so thank you!

4,000 B.C. > I settled in place. Raging Barbs and 11 tribes spell trouble for me. I build warrior and road the tobacco.

3800 B.C.> I consider changing my warrior build to bowman, but commit to the warrior. Just as he appears so does a barbarian. The first correct decision has been made. I will make many errors, but at least I am not pillaged in antiquity.

2470 B.C.> I have researched alphabet and traded extensively so I am up to speed scientifically. Unfortunately I forgot about the Code of Hammurabi government until now. I’ve had alphabet, but now I change out of depotism.

2150 B.C.> Hammurabi’s Stele completed. Very cool graphic! It looks more like the Stele than the internet for sure. I don’t know if this made the difference, but barbarians were very mild this game and never a problem.

590 B.C.> Egypt has crossed the ocean. I make an embassy in their capital and see the continent is easily accessible by a NW route. I send a galley there and make first contact with all the other civs. This is an advantage over my continental neighbors.

550 B.C.> Cleopatra lands a settler on my continent. I can’t abide this so I declare and take two slaves. Sadly they are slaughtered by barbarian immediately. The war ends with no further bloodshed eventually.

390 B.C.> Republic of Babylon.

10 B.C.> Fiscal mismanagement. The Guards of the Seven Tablets are disbanded. I never found out if they had any special powers, but they did kill a few barbs.

70 A.D.> Carthage declares. They trip me into a golden age and destroy one of my precious core cities. I settle for peace fairly quickly and actually come out well with tech trades in the process.

400-500 A.D.> A good era for me. In two turns I get Knights Templar, Leonardo’s Workshop, and Copernicus’ Observatory. I was thinking I would get a cultural victory, but CivAssist II predicted that for 1963 and that is too late, so I change to a general strategy.

990 A.D.> Steam power and rails start getting layed. Babylon builds the Iron Works! Thanks again Piu. I barely lose out by one or two turns on Newton’s University and Magellan; with a little more careful management I probably would have gotten them.

1060 A.D.> I declare on Byzantium and take Constantinople and the Collosus. I share continental dominance with Greece, but we never go to war.

1270 A.D.> I get ToE and then right away Electronics and Replaceable Parts. I had prebuilt the palace so I build the Hoover Dam with no lag and I see that my earlier expansion has given me rubber. I upgrade all my troops to infantry because my coffers are full. Now I dominate.

1365-1425 A.D.> Oil. I know will need it but where will it be? Perhaps on the marshy island that no one has settled? Piu Freddo is crafty... I send workers and a settler there on a hunch and I’m right. It is eventually shown to have oil. I build a town on the oil but then Carthage declares. They raze the city on oil, but fortunately they could not take the town and did not have a settler. They capture Istanbul but I push back and regain what they took and take Carthage and the Great Library. We reach peace, but a lot of blood was spilled. (I never got a military leader the whole game.)

1640 A.D.> I have eight luxuries and my people are happy. Egypt is building the UN so I trade them three techs for Fission, change Babylon production to the United Nations, and build this wonder the next turn. I will not get a culture win, I could get a space win, but I will go for a diplomatic victory. I find the space race tedious.

1695 A.D.> Diplomatic victory on the second vote! The game didn’t save so I had to redo it and couldn’t reproduce the magic. On Round #2 I need to play out further, eliminated Carthage, and upgraded my infantry to Mechanized Infantry. I was bulletproof, and got the diplomatic victory in 1750 A.D. on the redo.

So thanks again Piu and I expect to see from the others how a cultural victory should be done.

 

[CKS]

We've been dealing with some significant health issues in my household, and that has severely impacted my playing. However, I managed to finish the game in time. I enjoyed the game, though I played more to get done than to do well, and there won't be much to this write-up.

I switched to Code of Hammurabi and then to the Republic. I was surprised that the Stele disappeared when switching out of Code of Hammurabi, but I needed commerce, so I probably would have switched ASAP anyway. If I'd waited until it was obsolete, would it have continued to generate culture?

I was amused that the tobacco was on a BG, and I appreciated that I could see the water was fresh from the start, so I didn't have any move/settle in place issues.

I hit 20k in Babylon in 1792.

 

[Più Freddo]

I was surprised that the Stele disappeared when switching out of Code of Hammurabi

Oops, that was not directly intended. I think there was another cut-off. I used the setting "requires Code of Hammurabi" and didn't realize that it would disappear.

I was amused that the tobacco was on a BG

Sweet, eh?

 

[CKS]

Yes, very "sweet." Although not as sweet as the cow on BG we got once, a long time ago.