Featured Game #2 Spoiler thread 2 - Endgame

[Thalassicus]

@Seek
To use printscreen with Civ it's necessary to either 1) use windowed mode or 2) hit the windows key, then click the game again (this does a pseudo-windowed mode). In either of these circumstances printscreen will work correctly.

 

[Seek]

Why was your science terrible - population?

I think so - my founded cities were production-focused for most of the game (a neat trick I discovered recently: lock down your production tiles then select the "food focus" button in your cities and the food from MarCS will jump dramatically, allowing you to grow or work production tiles you otherwise wouldn't have been able to.) Slow puppet growth was the main culprit, though (as discussed in my post in the "another thread about capturing cities" - the combination of gold-focused puppets with the food and production nerf mean the puppets are essentially useless unless they have a high population or a library). For example, you can see the three Egyptian cities I conquered first in one of the screenshots; Thebes was annexed and food focused for a while so it reached size 10, but the other two puppets were size 5 and 6 after having them for nearly 100 turns! (I'm guessing they also probably built a total of 3 buildings in that time also..)

Would the Taj have resulted in a higher score? I think so, based on lindanealmck building every available one. I didn't realize the game was bugged - I only notice the most glaring stuff while I play - so I only pursued the GW's that made sense to me.

The only reason I noticed it was because of the thread in the Bugs forum!

By the way, in my game the AI did expand. About the only empty-ish area was the desert between India, Germany and Arabia.

Odd how this stuff works out - you'd assume that the player is the only variable, but apparently that's not the case: I hardly interacted with Germany in the first 125 turns, for example, and after I took their little crap cities placed way too far away from their capital they just sat on their hands for the rest of the game. It really seemed like all the AIs just rage-quit my game!

@Thal: Thank you for the tips, but unfortunately I'm playing on a Mac through bootcamp, so I don't have the "print screen" button PC keyboards have - F12 (or F14?) worked in Windows XP, but Windows 7 keeps kicking my ass on this front, so I got a freeware screen-capture program that requires a mouse click. Next time I'll experiment with the windowed screen size to show the top and bottom (I didn't even realize they were cut off until I published the post), but I still won't be able to take a screen while mousing over anything.

 

[MacPlayerJay]

First game using VEM - Finished on turn 241, HOF score 3995. The game was pretty easy except for the slow start. I think settling in place was a mistake, it took forever for my borders to reach the tiles I wanted. I also took honor and finished the tree instead of taking liberty for the worker/settler which also slowed my early game.

My research was very slow for some reason. I guess I am used to the vanilla game, but on this difficulty level I was having trouble keeping up in techs. I am still confused about research agreements. I did not sign any early because of the cost and minimal benefit. I then signed a couple and it really did not do too much. I am wondering when and how often do you guys sign them in VEM? Are they really that beneficial? 3% of combined over 30 turns is not much, I am guessing about 2 or maybe 3 turns of research?

Anyway, about the game: I took out Egypt first with a few camel archers and levy, then rolled through the Iriquois. I bought a second army and sent it to Germany and at the same time the plan was to go through Russia but I had a problem with my friend Japan. They were a little erratic, they were way behind in score then all of a sudden had a ton of money and artillery really early - like turn 170. I had to turn around and finish them, then Persia started expanding like crazy so I took them out. After Germany, my second army rolled through India. Persia fell pretty quick then I DOWed the Romans and Russia and took both Capitals in a few turns.

I never made it to Artillery, and at the end had huge numbers of Cannon, rifles and my original Camel archers. I cannot believe how much money I had. I was buying at least 1 unit per turn with my 900+ gpt. The AI never really put up a fight. Persia got to light infantry but was no trouble and the rest were fighting with levy, trebs and knights. Like I said earlier, Japan all of a sudden had crazy money, only 4 cities, and artillery. I went cautiously towards them, but they only had 2 artillery pieces, but a 6000+ gold stack - it was weird.

Maybe a non-domination GOTM next?

 

[Txurce]

(a neat trick I discovered recently: lock down your production tiles then select the "food focus" button in your cities and the food from MarCS will jump dramatically, allowing you to grow or work production tiles you otherwise wouldn't have been able to.)(

I hadn't tried that, but had just taken the interim step of locking in production then choosing a science focus. Food makes a lot more sense - like "duh" sense.

First game using VEM - Finished on turn 241, HOF score 3995. The game was pretty easy except for the slow start. I think settling in place was a mistake, it took forever for my borders to reach the tiles I wanted. I also took honor and finished the tree instead of taking liberty for the worker/settler which also slowed my early game.

That's a very competitive effort, especially for your first crack. I didn't settle in place, but those who did often took advantage of Stonehenge's border expansion. I think going the Honor route made sense, though, in a Conquest game. Especially given the available gold, you didn't need that many cities to start conquering by the Renaissance.

My research was very slow for some reason. I guess I am used to the vanilla game, but on this difficulty level I was having trouble keeping up in techs. I am still confused about research agreements. I did not sign any early because of the cost and minimal benefit. I then signed a couple and it really did not do too much. I am wondering when and how often do you guys sign them in VEM? Are they really that beneficial? 3% of combined over 30 turns is not much, I am guessing about 2 or maybe 3 turns of research?

On King a player who did as well as you shouldn't have trouble keeping up in tech. RA's are worth it in my opinion, although they pale compared to vanilla. Some players find them weak early on, others OP. If I were going to differentiate, it would be to avoid scientifically weak civs unless you have gold to spare.

The AI never really put up a fight.

Maybe a non-domination GOTM next?

I've never experienced less of a fight, either.

I think the odds are very good that the next game won't be domination.

 

[Thalassicus]

The next game will have all victory conditions available. One of the features of VEM is the wide variety of possible strategies, so I don't think we should limit that. The domination requirement for Game 2 was simply to try it and see how it worked out.

 

[Txurce]

I'm betting it's Persia, then!

I have a few comments, thoughts and questions on this topic, but maybe this conversation belongs in the GOTM thread. I'll continue at

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=10979524#post10979524.

 

[Txurce]

Here are the high scores for GotVEM #2 – the top three for Hall of Fame high score, and the top three for fastest finish. (GotVEM #2 allowed only a Domination Victory.) Seek was the runner-up in both categories, and lindanealmck’s high score really stood out.

The winners are:

High Score

1. lindanealmck (7220)
2. Seek (5602)
3. redrover57 (5547)

Fastest Finish

1. Gamewizard (205)
2. Seek (217)
3. redrover57 (231)

iWant921nooow and void_genesis also had scores that would have been in the top three, but had to restart their games.