hum, congrats?
IMHO, this means next round will see more war.
Must open the game again, but I have the feeling that declaring on bismarck could be the way to go.
Fix the 5th trash game
- Thread starter cabert
- Start date
hum, congrats?
IMHO, this means next round will see more war.
Must open the game again, but I have the feeling that declaring on bismarck could be the way to go.
Öjevind Lång
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2005
- Messages
- 2,371
Could be - take two cities from him, then convert to Hinduism and force him to do the same. I really don't think it's a good idea not to exploit the fact that we have a holy city - more than one, actually, but the one whose religion has spread the most is Hinduism.
If Cyrus is annoyed by that, capture his horse city and then make peace with him.
Öjevind Lång;5384093 said:
I believe avoiding war with cyrus for a while would be best : he has more power, more techs, more production than we do!
So guys, next round due on friday evening american east coast time = saturday afternoon for the lucky autralians.
We're playing up to 1650AD, best game will be selected next.
Hum, Roland, are you sure you don't want to try to fix this one?
I think we're going to need a strong, lucky round to get out of this hole (no offense shyhue, I see you did well in the teching departement, but we're kind of small, now
).The good part is we can try some wacky exotic moves in the "best round", if it turns out badly, the game is simply not selected
.
pigswill
fly (one day)
I'm still Immune 
.
But seriously folks.
Shyuhe: Luck (good and bad) does play a significant role in Civ (or it would be a slightly more complex (and prettier) game of chess). Skill comes in minimising the bad luck and maxing the good luck. I'm sure your round was voted trash on the basis of bad luck rather than poor skill or judgement (unlike mine I might add
).
Having said that we are falling behind a bit so we'll need some solid rounds (or just one brilliant one) to restore parity.
I'm wondering whether it would be worth pooling our ideas as to how to proceed from here. It wouldn't be a recipe as such but it would provide a list of ingredients to see who could produce the best recipe from them.
.But seriously folks.
Shyuhe: Luck (good and bad) does play a significant role in Civ (or it would be a slightly more complex (and prettier) game of chess). Skill comes in minimising the bad luck and maxing the good luck. I'm sure your round was voted trash on the basis of bad luck rather than poor skill or judgement (unlike mine I might add
).Having said that we are falling behind a bit so we'll need some solid rounds (or just one brilliant one) to restore parity.
I'm wondering whether it would be worth pooling our ideas as to how to proceed from here. It wouldn't be a recipe as such but it would provide a list of ingredients to see who could produce the best recipe from them.
Giaur
War Dancer
can I then ask what you voted for?
not the names, but best or worse games?
This was a trash round, and I have the feeling we'll need a big fixing round next week.
I voted for 3 best saves and 3 worst saves. In summary - 6 votes
I'll give you special pass if you come up with a brilliant gameI'm still Immune
.If you don't you'll be returning officer again
.Shyuhe: Luck (good and bad) does play a significant role in Civ (or it would be a slightly more complex (and prettier) game of chess). Skill comes in minimising the bad luck and maxing the good luck. I'm sure your round was voted trash on the basis of bad luck rather than poor skill or judgement (unlike mine I might add
the fact that FdR came to me with theology and optics and lacking all useful techs is symptomatic : a bit of luck came make a huge difference.
Final afterthoughts for the previous round on my part :
In the previous round, I have the feeling that sueing for peace with brennus asap was necessary to avoid a war with cyrus. I should have stated so in the preround discussion (but if I recall well, you already played
). Dogpiling decision isn't the same as pure Dow decision, and I'm pretty sure that being down to cautious with cyrus by switching to hinduism like I did was less an issue than staying at war.
+ brennus could bribe cyrus easily (even for free maybe) if you remained at war.
This + the fact that our army was not perfectly fitted for the war motivated my sue for peace decision and I think this was the main point.
After that, I went into pacifism and hinduism and run a few scientists in "pure scientist cities" to be sure to lightbulb education fast enough to get to liberalism. the heathen factor isn't that bad for cyrus, and it certainly helped me to be able to trade a bit longer with bismarck
.that's the optimistic way to say it.
IMHO, we need 1 really brilliant fixing round now. And we need a not too bad trash game after that, then we need another really good fixing round to be on par
.Note that I'm not saying that Shyhue's game was THAT bad, but if an AI launches just after the next trash round, we're still fu**ed.
I must confuss I'm a traditionnal pessimist. ANd in this situation, I think I have the right to be pessimistic.
OK for me.
I'm even tempted to say we should not all play the same way.
Because if we did, an error in what we saw as best plan would be deadly + luck factor wouldn't function correctly (bad luck in trash rounds, good luck in fixing round).
I'll make an executive decision after this fixing round if needed, to avoid a deadly trash round.
What I mean is if our fixing round is not good enough to see us above the pack next week, I'll suggest more debate before the next trash round or even something more radical if necessary.
ideas for next round :
Some facts :
1) we need more cities
2) we need to tech fast
3) we need to prevent some AIs to run away with the game
1 and 2 are somewhat contradictory.
IMHO, it would be great if some of us tried a peaceful build up (oxford is available soon, we're philo!) while others tried a more warlike path.
IMHO, the best target for a war is bismarck. He is not everybody's best friend + he is not THAT powerfull + he doesn't trade with us, and for this he deserves to be hurt + if he falls in the second part of the scoreboard, he'll be ready to trade again
.Trying to get trading partners on the other continent is another strong move. I don't think there is any hope to overcome the hole without trading with the others. We have education on some AIs, for sure.
KMadCandy
giggling permanoob
i kept looking at it because i feel like i escaped a war by lots of luck and i want to understand what happened so that i don't have to rely on luck. being lucky is good, but you can't count on it. your theory isn't how it happened in this case. i looked at the log of shyuhe's game. 1010 he sues for peace with brennus, 1020 cyrus goes into theocracy. he went hindu/pacifist for a while (starting 1080), so did i. i don't think that cyrus ever even made any demands for shyuhe to reject and get negative modifiers for. but, in 1170, cyrus declared war on shyuhe.
in my game, i sued for peace in 1000, one turn earlier. cyrus switched to merc in 1020 for me, but not theocracy. i went hindu in 1030 (earlier than shyuhe). no issues with cyrus until in 1130 he came by to ask for philo, i said no. of course that got me a "-1 you refused to help us". i changed to no state religion. i didn't go jewish yet because i wanted the extra culture from multiple religions down at the southern border, and also my economy was hurting and not enough cities were jewish to justify paying for any of the civics IMO. i was hoping that losing the heathen -, even without picking up the siblings of the faith +, would be enough. and cyrus never did pick on me.
i even went back to the 1000 AD round. he did know theology going into this, so it isn't that he got a shiny new toy in some games and wanted to try it out, and didn't have access to it in other games. i can't think of a way it would be that shyuhe is a weaker target on the power graph, so cyrus would just be being opportunistic, since i didn't do any military buildup. i dunno, i tried but i can't sort it out, so i'll concentrate on the future rather than the past.
ideas for next round :
Some facts :
1) we need more cities
2) we need to tech fast
3) we need to prevent some AIs to run away with the game
1 and 2 are somewhat contradictory.
IMHO, it would be great if some of us tried a peaceful build up (oxford is available soon, we're philo!) while others tried a more warlike path.
IMHO, the best target for a war is bismarck. He is not everybody's best friend + he is not THAT powerfull + he doesn't trade with us, and for this he deserves to be hurt + if he falls in the second part of the scoreboard, he'll be ready to trade again
Trying to get trading partners on the other continent is another strong move. I don't think there is any hope to overcome the hole without trading with the others. We have education on some AIs, for sure.
brennus is last half of scoreboard for sure. i have a plan for getting on his good-enough side, even with that silly grudge he's still holding about that whole war we fought. since cyrus trades with him, he'll be our best source on this continent; if we can get techs he and cyrus don't have, he won't have the WFYABTA limit that cyrus will. if we can get bismarck down there too, awesome.
#3 i'm at a loss for. in this save we don't know who else is out there, but there's a possiblity that on the other continent there isn't lots of bitterness between them to exploit. oh dear.
Roland Johansen
Deity
Hey, thanks.
I like the discussions we had here. It's always nice to hear other points of view concerning this game. Everyone has a different playing style and I think anyone can learn from another players style.I believe avoiding war with cyrus for a while would be best : he has more power, more techs, more production than we do!
So guys, next round due on friday evening american east coast time = saturday afternoon for the lucky autralians.
We're playing up to 1650AD, best game will be selected next.
Hum, Roland, are you sure you don't want to try to fix this one?
I think we're going to need a strong, lucky round to get out of this hole (no offense shyhue, I see you did well in the teching departement, but we're kind of small, now
The good part is we can try some wacky exotic moves in the "best round", if it turns out badly, the game is simply not selected
I'm going on a little vacation to the capital of a great country tomorrow and I'll stay there until sunday, so I couldn't play this game. I'm going to visit Paris.
I'll take a look at the savegame now and I'll see if I can give some comments that might help. However, comments can help only a bit, you'll just need a good game if the situation is really as bad as you make it sound.
I like your plan about various players taking different actions to try and get a good round. Some of you are better at the aggressive moves and some of you are better at the constructive moves, so you could discuss various tactics and each pick one. Allthough players usually don't like to be forced in a certain play style, so maybe that's not such a good plan.
FeedBack
Time for some FeedBack!
Er... Congratulations, shyuhe! 
We have some spoilerish info that may help us here. We know the other competitors, even if we didn't meet them. So, we have to try working it on our cause...
I got some XML info for you here:
The best trading partner here is Wang. He's not gonna care too much about others knowing the same tech. The only problem is that he trades fewer techs than Augustus and FdR. If we could find Wang last, that would be good, as we could trade everything we can with FDR and Augustus without him knowing. The downside here is that we wouldn't know if one of them is Wang's "worst enemy".
Cyrus has rifles. We can't harm him until we get at least grenadiers. Cannons are welcome too. So, until then, he needs to be a friend. Bismarck is, indeed, a target. But we need numbers to get him and don't be
by Cyrus and his vassal.
Also, I'd need some advice here. Specializing cities is not my specialty. What would you call each of our cities? Is the Heroic Epic already built? We are gonna need it soon to crank out the necessary troops, if war should be the path... Where should I build it? Should I build it?
We have some spoilerish info that may help us here. We know the other competitors, even if we didn't meet them. So, we have to try working it on our cause...
I got some XML info for you here:
Spoiler :
The best trading partner here is Wang. He's not gonna care too much about others knowing the same tech. The only problem is that he trades fewer techs than Augustus and FdR. If we could find Wang last, that would be good, as we could trade everything we can with FDR and Augustus without him knowing. The downside here is that we wouldn't know if one of them is Wang's "worst enemy".
Cyrus has rifles. We can't harm him until we get at least grenadiers. Cannons are welcome too. So, until then, he needs to be a friend. Bismarck is, indeed, a target. But we need numbers to get him and don't be
by Cyrus and his vassal.Also, I'd need some advice here. Specializing cities is not my specialty. What would you call each of our cities? Is the Heroic Epic already built? We are gonna need it soon to crank out the necessary troops, if war should be the path... Where should I build it? Should I build it?
right, and that's what afterthoughts are good for
IMHO the switch to theocracy is the sign of "we have enough on our hands" = declaration decision is already made at this point, maybe earlier.
The only way to avoid a war at this point is to get bismarck to declare on cyrus. Seeing that bismarck is not a lunatic, and knowing his power wasn't that good, it wasn't a real option. Tough luck here IMHO.
There is some random part in the DOW /dogpiling decision. Bad luck can be enough.
What I can say is I tried to get cyrus into building mode by trading him some things and by sueing for peace asap (but it certainly was 1010 or so too).
I also reinforced the SEstern city (vermalion?) to make it look less like an easy picking. Does any of those things prevent Cyrus from attacking?
I don't know. Maybe shyhue could try to track the exact date when cyrus decided to attack him using the autosaves (provided he has autosave interval to 1)?
What do you say shyhue? Any will to go back to this painful recent past?
care to share your plan? remember, the competitive aspect of those rounds is only minor to the fun and educationnal aspect.
reminder : favourite civics.
- cyrus : vassalage
- brennus : org rel
- bismarck : nationhood (unavailable, making bismarck an even better target
)avoiding AIs to tun away can be achieved in 3 ways AFAIK:
- direct war
- indirect war
- outracing them
edit : AFAIK, the running AI is cyrus.
direct war seems out for a few (10 at least) turns, but IMHO, we'll need to hurt him before the end of the game.
Spies or nuke, or just cannons and riflemen, but something must hit him if we want to win.
Giaur
War Dancer
I've just played till 1650AD. Very strong argument Shyuhe left was the output (he built forges). I won't spoil your games too early. Only want to bring some advice. When GNP is weak, you can always build research for several turns (and I did that).
or gold, if you don't have markets all over the place.
shyuhe
Deity
I guiess I wasn't clear in my summary of my turn set last time. I sued for peace on the first turn after the inherited turn with Brennus after seeing his mini-stack. I didn't like the composition of our stack. Then, Cyrus adopted theocracy for no reason on the second turn. As far as I can tell, Cyrus made the decision to attack me at that point (I checked and he had enough on his hands after going into theocracy). He may have already decided to dogpile before that but looking at the other results, that looks unlikely. I think Giaur's Cyrus adopted theocracy in 1020 as well, so I think that's when the Cyrus in our two games decided to attack us (note how Cyrus attacked us on almost the exact same turn in both sets). About the only thing I could have done to avoid it was to adopt his state religion at the start of the set, which is something I probably should have done since it was a trash round and not a best round coming up (= I should have taken minimal risks). I was keeping my fingers crossed that Cyrus wouldn't attack me but... not enough luck there.
Good luck digging us out of the hole I've dug Attacking Cyrus is a very bad idea at this point though. He will crush us (I took peace because he mass upgraded to rifles the turn that my stack got to his city) if we attack him. And earning a -3 modifier for one or two cities just isn't worth it. Cyrus won't bother us as long as he remains pleased so we just have to deal with our northern neighbor. As for liberalism, I think Wang got it in my game but I wasn't sure - it was by either Caesar or Wang.
Good luck digging us out of the hole I've dug
Attacking Cyrus is a very bad idea at this point though. He will crush us (I took peace because he mass upgraded to rifles the turn that my stack got to his city) if we attack him. And earning a -3 modifier for one or two cities just isn't worth it. Cyrus won't bother us as long as he remains pleased so we just have to deal with our northern neighbor. As for liberalism, I think Wang got it in my game but I wasn't sure - it was by either Caesar or Wang.
KMadCandy
giggling permanoob
"IMHO the switch to theocracy is the sign of "we have enough on our hands" = declaration decision is already made at this point, maybe earlier.
The only way to avoid a war at this point is to get bismarck to declare on cyrus. Seeing that bismarck is not a lunatic, and knowing his power wasn't that good, it wasn't a real option. Tough luck here IMHO."
yup that totally sucked. i'm glad it wasn't me, i just wish i knew why so that i could be sure it wouldn't be next time
"care to share your plan? remember, the competitive aspect of those rounds is only minor to the fun and educational aspect."
oh sure! i didn't ramble about it since i'm not sure this is the case in shyuhe's game. in my game, without a doubt, cyrus and brennus were sharing techs, as much as a PA, just with a turn delay. if that is the case here, i'm quite sure this will work, given results i've had in situations that were sort of similar in other games. i love to play around with diplomacy muhahaha. but others will do better in other areas, so if i can help them in this area, and then they end up with a better game for us to build on, i'll be quite happy with my contribution and not at all sad about losing a vote i expect to lose
so if we assume they are doing the happy love-fest "i know this, you should know it too" thing here... (if you were watching the tech screen enough to know whether this is the case, shyuhe, let us know.)
that's good in one passive way, it lowers the cost for us to self-research tech X if we have to. big deal. let's exploit it to maximum advantage.
get this ... say we get tech Y they don't know. they won't trade it, since cyrus thinks we're too advanced, and brennus doesn't like us enough. if we decide that it's not worth hanging on to in the hopes that cyrus will change his mind, maybe chances are he'll research it himself so it won't be any good as trade bait ...
gift it to brennus free. should work out as an instant +4 fair and forthright. that should take away the redline "we just don't like you enough" from trading techs, and then he'd trade with us.
if brennus knows everything cyrus knows, and is in the bottom of the scoreboard and we are too, so that WFYABTA does not apply, and if we have the ability to research and the luck to pick techs that cyrus/brennus don't know yet ... bingo! a lot of if's but it'd be sweet!
once you do give it to brennus, take it as given that cyrus will know it next turn, so sell it to him for whatever gold you can get, or an update on his world map. but i think it'd be a worthwhile investment. repeat if necessary.
if this works, and if cyrus does in the future lose WFYABTA temporarily and there are trade deals available with both him and brennus, take the one with cyrus first. trading with either one will add to WFYABTA with everyone that is still counting that limit, so use cyrus while you can, to get a 2-techs-for-1-deal if this situation ever comes up. WFYABTA would probably be in effect with everybody forever if we have success with cyrus teching his butt off and we get those techs from brennus. but if WFYABTA gets forgotten for a bit, that would be the most efficient thing to do if the two of them have more than one tech we don't know, and two trade options available on the same turn.
"sometimes it's better to be lucky than good."
"it is better to give than to receive." i don't know if that counts when the giving is done in order to set up future receiving
The only way to avoid a war at this point is to get bismarck to declare on cyrus. Seeing that bismarck is not a lunatic, and knowing his power wasn't that good, it wasn't a real option. Tough luck here IMHO."
yup that totally sucked. i'm glad it wasn't me, i just wish i knew why so that i could be sure it wouldn't be next time
"care to share your plan? remember, the competitive aspect of those rounds is only minor to the fun and educational aspect."
oh sure! i didn't ramble about it since i'm not sure this is the case in shyuhe's game. in my game, without a doubt, cyrus and brennus were sharing techs, as much as a PA, just with a turn delay. if that is the case here, i'm quite sure this will work, given results i've had in situations that were sort of similar in other games. i love to play around with diplomacy muhahaha. but others will do better in other areas, so if i can help them in this area, and then they end up with a better game for us to build on, i'll be quite happy with my contribution and not at all sad about losing a vote i expect to lose
so if we assume they are doing the happy love-fest "i know this, you should know it too" thing here... (if you were watching the tech screen enough to know whether this is the case, shyuhe, let us know.)
that's good in one passive way, it lowers the cost for us to self-research tech X if we have to. big deal. let's exploit it to maximum advantage.
get this ... say we get tech Y they don't know. they won't trade it, since cyrus thinks we're too advanced, and brennus doesn't like us enough. if we decide that it's not worth hanging on to in the hopes that cyrus will change his mind, maybe chances are he'll research it himself so it won't be any good as trade bait ...
gift it to brennus free. should work out as an instant +4 fair and forthright. that should take away the redline "we just don't like you enough" from trading techs, and then he'd trade with us.
if brennus knows everything cyrus knows, and is in the bottom of the scoreboard and we are too, so that WFYABTA does not apply, and if we have the ability to research and the luck to pick techs that cyrus/brennus don't know yet ... bingo
! a lot of if's but it'd be sweet!once you do give it to brennus, take it as given that cyrus will know it next turn, so sell it to him for whatever gold you can get, or an update on his world map. but i think it'd be a worthwhile investment. repeat if necessary.
if this works, and if cyrus does in the future lose WFYABTA temporarily and there are trade deals available with both him and brennus, take the one with cyrus first. trading with either one will add to WFYABTA with everyone that is still counting that limit, so use cyrus while you can, to get a 2-techs-for-1-deal if this situation ever comes up. WFYABTA would probably be in effect with everybody forever if we have success with cyrus teching his butt off and we get those techs from brennus. but if WFYABTA gets forgotten for a bit, that would be the most efficient thing to do if the two of them have more than one tech we don't know, and two trade options available on the same turn.
"sometimes it's better to be lucky than good."
"it is better to give than to receive." i don't know if that counts when the giving is done in order to set up future receiving
Giaur
War Dancer
@Shyuhe: Cyrus in my game adopted Theocracy after I adopted hinduism, so I guess you had worse luck.
Roland Johansen
Deity
Here's what I would try to do if I were to play this turnset:
Spoiler :
KMadCandy
giggling permanoob
i was eyeballing fur/silver/pony country up there, but bismarck did have multiple new, not yet culture-popped cities up there in my world it looked like. it might have been possible to settle in the middle of them, where i could only work the 2 freshwater lake tiles, and get the ponies in the 2nd ring of my city. that'd be an ugly city. i do want ponies in the days of cavalry, in addition to luxuries. i'll check out the scenery in shyuhe's world.
we all know i'm a peacemonger. i was half-thinking of settling "sucky future culture push city" smackdab between ergili and that barb city that bismarck took that has the wheat, and just culture the crap out of them, so that i could keep the clams, and get the wheat from him
. it could work basically, like, 3 total coast and desert tiles or something, maybe there was a hill, until it pushed some of their tiles back i think it was, but i want wheat a lot! there is always the beat him up approach...medic3: you're right in an ideal world, but we can't make fast units, weak or not. we have no ponies. i like to use a chariot and never upgrade it. we could have used a weaker unit but we haven't once had an opportunity for fast units except our workers, who can't learn to heal *giggle*.
Roland Johansen
Deity
Maybe you can trade maps or sent a unit up there to take a look. We of course shouldn't blindly build a settler and move it up there.
Shyuhe could maybe tell us how up to date the map is? It is information that we should have if we played the game ourselves, so it isn't spoiler information.
I also prefer the chariot medic III. I don't upgrade it until I can get gunships. I do upgrade it to a gunship. That way, you'll get an extremely fast healer.
If horses are not available, then I would have used a scout/explorer. It's a pity that it can't be upgraded to a gunship in the later ages, but there are no other disadvantages. It's fast and unlikely to be attacked in a stack of units. The explorer also gets some movement bonusses.
shyuhe
Deity
I don't remember the date of the map, unfortunately... I got my map from FDR I think, but I'm not certain. It can certainly use some updating however.
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