Deity please! #4

[Noogai]

1800 AD

Spoiler :

Alex declared on Ram, but then Ram vassaled Alex (which made Roosevelt free).
Then Nappy declared on me and took back his cities. I gave Philadelphia to Roose and then bribed him against Nappy.
Map situation at the time:

Spoiler :

Then I teched radio and traded it for artillery -> I took back some cities close to me. Now I just finished fission (someone spied it from me at the very same turn!) and traded it for useful techs like assembly line.
Map situation now:

Spoiler :

It looks like Ram is going to win this game (he and Asoka completed Apollo already a while ago!), so what I'm going to do now is nuke the sh*t out of Nappy and take his land like a psychopath.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

@awilder

Interesting choice teching cannons. I almost never do that, with me it's always cuirs / cavs / or rifles. You have a nice tech lead though, so should be interesting to see how this pans out.

I would hit nappy first because it looks like he's the closest in tech. He's also fairly close in terms of distance. Whip cannons + and maybe draft muskets and hit him hard and fast.

 

[GKey]

@Lib-->steel is my favorite too because of clear bulbing path. PP-Chemistry can be bulbed by GS. Depending on tech trade situation and amount of GS you got, you can get Lib-Steel sooner then Lib-MT.

2 move powerful units are devastating in good hands, while cannons are always good, regardless of players skill. That's why I like them.

 

[GKey]

I haven’t played my turnset yet. My attention has been destructed, sorry.

First, I’ve found that BULL is actually not unaltered gameplay. It includes unofficial patch. I made some research and wrote to EmperorFull – mod creator. He promised update BULL documentation.

Btw Awilder

Spoiler :

I saw your post regarding BULL messing with screen info. It might have something to do with BAT you previously used. BAT includes BULL ver 1.3, while you could install BULL ver 1.2. If you did not uninstall BAT before installing BULL there could be a problem. Try rename your custom assets folder and make it been recreated once you restart the Civ. Once in game hover your mouse over empire flag, will show you if you still run BULL or something. Then install BULL again.

After that I visited thread by ABCDPuppies and he pointed me to this old thread. I’ve read it and decided to give it a try for a few turns…
and stood there for entire week.
This is absolutely huge! I don’t remember myself having so much fun from playing.
It’s OCC Always War on Deity with 6 aggressive leaders.
One guy there got Lib-Biology 350 BC and won by conquest in 16xx (he popped Mining/Masonry/BW/Math from huts though). Yes, Huts/events are on (and tech trading is off – what actually makes it winnable).

When did I play with huts last time? Don’t remember. But soon enough I’ve found myself reloading again and again to get that BW and more.

Pulled conquest but got disappointed with victory date, so I played it through several more times. I’ve learned tons about units experience/promotions and more. Lots of fun!

That was my story.
Now I am back to our serious business and hopefully will post my report soon.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

First, I’ve found that BULL is actually not unaltered gameplay. It includes unofficial patch. I made some research and wrote to EmperorFull – mod creator. He promised update BULL documentation.

What's it alter?

All my videos for this map are uploaded, with a domination in 1505 AD.

I capped Nappy first with elephants, then hopped on the Alex bandwagon against sitting Bull. Capped SB, then attacked Rosy. Capped Rosy, then hopped on the Alex bandwagon again against Ramses, capped ramses. Then I teched to rifles around 1200 AD and took down Alex with stacks of calvary. After that I hit the land domination limit.

Vids:

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5

part 6

part 7

 

[GKey]

What's it alter?

Overflow hammers will go into gold, the whole new economy I got no idea about.

Spoiler :

@Dhoomstriker.
You are right!

I've created in worldbuilder 4 pop city with granary and forge. Then I hover mouse over whip button and see:

Spoiler :

Here it is for those who want check.

Yes it works only with BULL. With original dll you get just hammers.
This may have serious impact on the game. There are situations when you don't have anything to build ATM, so why not make some gold? It can be useful in Strike situations too. Complete new economics!

After collecting my jaw from under the table I've made search on the internet. Found nothing and asked mod creator.

Responce:

We decided to include the fixes in the community-built Unofficial Patch for 3.19 in BUG and BULL as they are limited to fixing real bugs in the original game.

Here it is. If you use BULL and hover mouse over your empire flag you see something like that:

While official mod description states that :

....1. INTRODUCTION

BULL is an unaltered-gameplay mod for Civ4:BTS....

There is no single word about fact that it includes unofficial patch.

And how we do compare our games in concurrent series now? It appears we play different versions! And saves are compatible!

I was pissed by this ridiculous situation: you install unofficial patch without know!

I wrote to EmperorFull again. Hope he will understand me right.

Thanks Dhoom and good job!

Awesome game, AbsoluteZero!

 

[awilder]

Thanks gkey, the bull issue is fixed

 

[AbsoluteZero]

I'm totally confused.

I did indeed get an 11 gold overflow ( why it was 11 gold I have no idea, the overflow was 8 ) once while whipping a warrior.

But I can't get it to happen again. Just the hammer overflow, no gold.

What are the circumstances where overflow is supposed to go into gold?

 

[GKey]

It is confusing. In my example it gave me 17gold instead of 13.

Overflow affected by base production or forge? No idea, need check this. Dhoomstriker might have info. Check his calculations here:

You need to spend 1 turn in warrior first before whip IMO, or penalty will nullify overflow.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

OK, now I get it.

Basically what happens is you get lost hammers in gold.

If you build a wall ( 50 hammers ) and you chop 10 forests for 300 hammers ( assuming math and close distance ) the most you can get in overflow is 50 hammers because that was the hammer cost of the wall ( hammers left mind you, not the base cost ), so instead of 200 hammers going poof you get 200 gold.

That makes sense, and it's not a bad idea. You could get some major gold really early though. Whether it would be worth it more then fail gold from a resourced wonder is an interesting question.

Why civ 4 doesn't just carry indefinite overflow is beyond me. That would keep things simple.

 

[GKey]

Why civ 4 doesn't just carry indefinite overflow is beyond me. That would keep things simple.

It's not simple and opens gate for abuse. Here's good example. Guy got in OCC production of 100 hammers per turn (without modifiers). Next he start build chariots nonstop (he delete them same turn).

With the Heroic Epic he got +100% production on military units. That translates into +100% gold from the hammers lost since he spent enormous numbers of hammers on tiny Chariots.

AND this overflow drags on next turn, means next turn he got 200 hammers + 25 hammers overflow from previous build:

Start
200 production 0 overflow
Chariot built
200 production+25hammers overflow+175 lost overflow gold
Chariot built
200 production + 200 overflow 200>gold
Chariot built
200 production + 200 overflow 225>gold
etc.

If I got it right, that was in vanilla BTS (or 3.17?). Then Firaxis fixed that in 3.19 - intention was to not apply modifiers on overflow gold. But that was bugged and instead we got no gold from lost overflow at all. That's what your get without BULL. You can check by restoring original dll instead of BULL's one. No gold from lost overflow.

Community in Unofficial Patch put it in a way it was intended so you get gold from lost overflow but without modifiers applied.

BTW the map is still winnable with bug fixed. Tons of fun!

 

[AbsoluteZero]

It's not simple and opens gate for abuse. Here's good example. Guy got in OCC production of 100 hammers per turn (without modifiers). Next he start build chariots nonstop (he delete them same turn).

With the Heroic Epic he got +100% production on military units. That translates into +100% gold from the hammers lost since he spent enormous numbers of hammers on tiny Chariots.

AND this overflow drags on next turn, means next turn he got 200 hammers + 25 hammers overflow from previous build:

Start
200 production 0 overflow
Chariot built
200 production+25hammers overflow+175 lost overflow gold
Chariot built
200 production + 200 overflow 200>gold
Chariot built
200 production + 200 overflow 225>gold
etc.

Just make it so you carry over whatever base hammers are left from building until they are used. No need to give gold for excess hammers at all.

The only exploit I can think of here is you could theoretically store large hammer overflow for wonders when they become available. But is that really such an exploit? You have to sacrifice earlier expansion / buildings, so in my view it evens out.

 

[Kid R]

I agree, I would rather base hammers were saved up than getting gold, or obviously getting nothing.

I don't think it would be exploitable. Any time you might go to the trouble of microing to hoard hammers with the intention of unleashing them all at once later, you would probably have been better using them up front to build wealth to get to the wonder/military tech quicker rather than having hammers sat there doing nothing. And that way you're not building heaps of trash units either.

 

[Noogai]

1878 AD Cultural lost

Spoiler :

Asoka wins cultural victory (Ram must be pissed of about that).
UN made me to make peace with Nappy, but after 10 turns I hit him with nukes and razed his cities (including Paris) as much as I had time to.

Here is the map:

Spoiler :

Demos:

Spoiler :

Stats:

Spoiler :

I think I did quite well on deity level since I was in middle of score board, demos etc and there was some aggressive AIs close to me. So I'll be playing these much more in future, thanks for the game!

 

[awilder]

update to 1290AD

Spoiler :

Well it took a super long time to build up military. It was a combination of me jumping the gun on lib (shoulda done lib>communism) and not being ready to produce, and also everyone having an assload of military due to constant world war.

Ram actually managed to fend off Nappy/Rosy and Alex. Napoleon had a stack of 40-50 guys just wandering around in Ram's territory that never even approached a city. Then he declared peace.... He might've been confused by rivers? See pic below. I was ready to bribe out if it got too hot for Ram, cause I didn't want super Nap team to form. I teched to econ, then teched to communism, and about then I was ready to declare:

I spent a few turns wiping out stack after stack of reinforcements in Giza to wear him down to my power. Through the river even! Cannons are bomb.

One thing that speeds up cannon warfare relative to mounted somewhat is that you can chose to forgo healing completely. Only 2-4 cannons will get damaged heavily in each city battle; the mop up crew barely gets scratched, and the hurt cannons can later just bombard.

Here's a sample battle log from a city take: (have rifling by now)

Here's the land I grabbed from ram:

Here's tech:

Ram was the only one in emancipation

Nap is in WHEOOHRN, and I have a peace treaty from a beg. He's def going after SB yet again (bribed him off earlier). I will probably try to cap Alex with my newly built rifle army while my veteran army returns from Egypt, and then declare on nap when he's good and out of position.

Not really sure what to tech next actually. I have the kremlin so I should trade for constitution and tech demo? Maybe tech to physics for airship support? Or railroad for speeding up reinforcements.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

@ awilder:

Nice work. Strange you chose to totally wipe out Egypt rather then capping for tech.

Tech demo? Are you crazy? I doubt if you have the spare gold to go buy crazy in US and the AI loves teching demo, trade for it instead.

You can probably get demo from alex once you cap him. I wouldn't bother with airships, railroad is what you need right now since you are doing siege.

 

[Archredbeard]

All my videos for this map are uploaded, with a domination in 1505 AD.

I capped Nappy first with elephants, then hopped on the Alex bandwagon against sitting Bull. Capped SB, then attacked Rosy. Capped Rosy, then hopped on the Alex bandwagon again against Ramses, capped ramses. Then I teched to rifles around 1200 AD and took down Alex with stacks of calvary. After that I hit the land domination limit.

I am absolutely stunned. Reason?

All I know and have read about CIV4 gets blown away every time you play, AZ

I mean, come on, everyone and hes mama + hes faraway cousin KNOW, that the method of getting techs is GROWTH, be it to work tiles for cottages or farms+specialists/mines and what have you, but you

I mean, when one look at the rampage You do on the last 7 vids, having nearly NO city beyond level 4-5 and that being in 900+ AD

The only decent city was Your Capital at level 13

At Awilders screenies, you can see 4 cities of hes, lowest was level 10 !!

Thats teh kinda stuff im used to at 1000-1100 AD, not a whole bunch of ragtagcities whipped to oblivion for an eternity

I guess its time to rewrite the Strategy Forums

I really like your style of playing, its very refreshing to see some whipabuse

Keep em coming please

 

[Mylene]

AZ game was over before he would need bigger cities for teching
Early you just need techs like construction & hbr, maths and currency. Of course gold mines and a FIN leader help a lot. Then bulbs and stuff you get from wars will do for a long time.

Growth is overrated, besides for whipping it is nice of course. But the ideal size for whipping is between 4 and 5. Cottages are bad tiles when under pressure like on this map, besides for getting the initial techs, but after that i often wouldn't work a river village

 

[awilder]

@AZ

Spoiler :

You're quite right about demo; that would be silly. I think I'll just keep the slider at 0% for now. The tech I have can probably get me to the end, and I now have horse, so I can just have cavs be the reinforcements.

As for Ram, I destroyed him instead of capping him cause
-If I vassaled him, there was a decent chance I would be nap's target instead of SB, and I wanted his troops out of position, not mine
-I will get exactly the same techs from Alex as soon as I cap him, and a couple more to boot
-Every single Egyptian city was sweet.
-No Egyptian culture, so I can draft everywhere immediately.

 

[Gwaja]

Archredbeard's impression was pretty much the same for me when I first started watching AZ's videos. Totally out of the "fundamentals" I thought of as necessity in this game. Totally different approach... very refreshing... I like it.

I've gotta try this approach soon. I always knew that whipping was best for cities of size 4 to 6, and that slavery is really really useful... and yet, I still don't seem to be able to leverage it to its full potential.