Earth18 More Mansa Musa Madness

[Harv]

T436 Finally -1846

We opted for a few turns of peace. Hindsight says we should have popped the golden age for this occasion.

The wonder hogging continues:
T411 The Kremlin - did nothing for me, but we built it in Moscow.
T412 Three Gorges Dam - Power on the main continent is nice when I spent a bunch of hammers on Factories.
T414 Eiffel Tower
T416 Cristo Redentor
T416 RocknRoll
T419 Hollywood
T419 United Nations


Tech grinds along
T412 Satellites
T415 Advanced Flight
T418 Composites
T420 Fission
T422 Ecology
T425 Laser
T429 Computers
T430 Fiber Optics
T433 Superconductors
T436 Robotics

T420 we took out a Barbarian city in Southeastern Australia

T425 Finally, we decided to declare on the Persia India block, about a couple of turns before we were ready.

Spoiler :

I did not know exactly where to look for just how many Cavalry and Rifles they had and it cost a stack of tanks and the body count no longer looks pretty and efficient. I see this as like a game of Axis and Allies. Overkill just means there are more units to reinforce. Not having enough units means they die. So that entire stack died to seemingly endless Cavalry and Rifle and Grenadier attacks. The AI stack was not big enough for a double counter attack, so it died as well. It was bloody and ugly.

It was a fake, anyway. We unloaded a bunch of tanks and artillery next to our entry point near Ectbatana.

We started taking cities.
T425 Chinook from Persia in Southeastern Africa
T425 Hyderabad from India because it was right there on the border
T426 Ectabana from Persia in modern-day Syria
T426 Mauryan from Persia in Western Africa. Apparently we needed that city to win.
T426 Lahore from India in Tanzania
T427 Dariush Kabir from Persia - This was their endless stack of Immortals destroyed.
T427 Zhou from Persia in South Africa
T427 Teohuacan from Persia in South Africa - We kicked the Persians out of Africa
T428 Madurai from India in New Zealand
T428 Patiputra from India in Southeast Asia
T428 Damascus from Persia and we kicked the Persians out of the Arabian Peninsula
T429 Pasargadae from Persia in Iraq
T429 Bangalore from India and we kicked India out of New Zealand
T430 Madras from India in Southeast Asia
T431 Tarsus from Persia from Persia at the Caspian Sea
T431 Ahmedabad from India in Southern Australia
T432 We razed the final city and kicked India out of Australia
T433 Bombay from India in Eastern India
T433 Persepolis captured
T434 Susa from Persia pushing towards India
T435 Gordium from Persia pushing northwards
T438 Delhi from Persia
T438 Vijinagara from Persia

Spoiler :

At this, it was time to end the war. Turns were taking too long and I wanted to get to bed at a decent time.

 

[Harv]

Results:

@LincolnOfRome - Here is the Settler you requested from Las Moscas. For a moment, I thought I was going to need that settler to pop a win.

Spoiler :

We tried for a Diplomatic win, but I guess declaring a war a few turns prior to that does not help. The vote got cancelled, and looking up the issue indicates that somebody must have defied the resolution. I never checked who blocked the diplomilitaristic victory.

We almost built the Spaceship.

Spoiler :

We finally got the domination win and if we didn't, we had a couple of Settlers ready to build up cities in silly desert places.

Spoiler :

1846 Domination Victory
170921 Points

On the subject of focus, I keep saying that a lot of things tend to distract me from that. It is probably part of what makes Civ so addicting to me. It started with the Original Civ, where I was obsessed with playing Egypt on the Earth map, but got distracted from building units. Instead I was trying to build the Pyramids and wondering why Stalin and Shaka were killing me because I would not pay them 50gp in tribute.

Similarly, the goal in the early part of this map is to take out an AI. Everybody was telling me to take out Egypt early and that is most likely the better way to do it. Instead, after exhausting the idea of building up the Niger and Congo Rivers and being isolated from the rest of the world and connected at the same time. The start felt too slow and wondered why China and Egypt were pulling so far ahead. Finally, I decided on the four turn journey to Morocco and set up an entry point into Spain and Europe and suddenly we were playing an England / Europe game - or even a Rome game.

I would never thought of the Northwest Morocco starting point unless that one player showed it to me. I went from a typical starting point of 1W Timbuktu which has no production, to 3E2S Kano which has production, but not much other land, to exploring Carthage starts, to Morocco.

Thank you everybody for your help in this.

 

[soundjata]

Results:

Spoiler :

We finally got the domination win and if we didn't, we had a couple of Settlers ready to build up cities in silly desert places.

Good job grinding up through all of this
95 cities in the end

Regarding "silly desert places":
That one has a name (Eucla) and even a Telegraph station

Spoiler :

 

[Harv]

In the last two turns, I knew the game was going to end shortly and I was no longer going to need to manage 150 tanks, so I spent a good bit of time fortifying all of my units. I also wanted to finish before midnight and get a final writeup in. Adding variety to the soundtrack really helped grind through to the end. I was playing to Civ4Col soundtrack and it was amusing. Next time I might look for something like the Hearts of Iron soundtrack. On Civ4, the soundtrack gets very repetitive after the Renaissance era, especially when running through hundreds of cities and units.

Well I dug into my past and found my Egypt thread.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-while-since-i-played-and-posted-here.654377/

It looks like the start was strong, then settled into my normal pattern of building and teching instead of attacking. It is kind of amusing that in 1250AD we were still in the Middle East. I think the game finished in 1716 with a Space Race. I did not look up the score and I have a new computer and the game is not on my HoF.

For Egypt, I went with a 1NE start position to gain an advantage of 1 Health and get the first Worker out 1 Turn earlier. The SIP position starts with negative health and the first Worker takes the normal 23 Turns. I do not know if we can recover those 5 Turns. The drawback to the 1NE position is we lose direct access to the Stone. It looks like in my early game, we indulged in several distractions as opposed to getting War Chariots and going after Arabia and Persia. My result was 8 War Chariots on turn 80, Turn 76 Persia destroyed, and Turn 88 Arabia destroyed.

It is also amusing how I was obsessed with saving a few beakers by teching prerequisite techs I did not immediately need. Egypt should have been simple. We need AH. That's it. After that we can get BW to see if we can get a few more hammers out of Slavery.

That game started funky because I did not have internet up from a recent move and could not upload pictures and saves.

 

[Trout]

Sorry to be jumping in here quite late. Yes, I am also one of the few who really love the Earth 18 scenario and have played it quite a bit. From my experience, I would add:

1. The starting positions are deliberately not fair as the scenario is trying to be historically accurate so the West African region is very poor in resources and fertile land as compared to China or Europe, because the reality is exactly that.

2. Playing raging barbarians does not add to the gameplay in this scenario in my opinion because it just puts Egypt, Mali, and Mongols in an even worse spot than they already are as even normal barbarians will pummel them while Japan, England, Aztecs, Arabians, and the Europeans are barely touched by them.

3. If you want to play for high score and/or challenge yourself by running the table as fast as you can, then you do so by: play any continental european civ, warrior rush the others, which will leave you with five capital cities that will fuel your game until the end. Build colossus and great lighthouse because of all of the water on the map. In the late game, go corporations with Mining/SS or Mining/Cereal Mills. SS is faster and CM will not hurt your economy as much since the maintenance penalty of SS for overseas locations is huge. What I tend to do in that situation is both - spread SS in the Old World and CM in the New World, Australia, Pacific Islands, etc.

4. If you are able to get GLH and Colossus, I find that you can expand as fast as you want and not crash your economy.

5. Because of the large number of cities on the map, shrines can really garner a lot of cash. Spain, Arabia, Monty, Hatty, and India are the ones who typically found the religions.

6. If you play Persia, your mission is pop all of those huts that are in your vicinity, build immortals, kill Egypt/Arabia/India, then turtle until your economy recovers.

7. Some civs absolutely should not SIP. Mali (for the reasons already discussed), Persia should move one tile north to grab the horses, and Inca/Spain should found capital on the coast.

8. If you play Japan, your mission is to acquire sailing and bronze working (oh wow! How convenient that I start with fishing, mining, copper, and two huts on my island) then build galley and two axes and capture Beijing. After that build your rising sun empire as Yamamoto tried but failed to do.

9. If you don't capture Mecca before Arabia has LB's, you will have a difficult fight on your hands.

10. If you play China, just expand, kill, and win the game. You have the best land outside of Europe and nobody to contest you for it. I find that expanding to Korea first works well because the land is very rich and I want to grab it before Japan or Mongols claim it. After that just work your way down to grab all of China and Indochina before swallowing up Japan and India at your leisure.

Hope this helps