FS1-Assimilation! (Noble?)

[Farae]

If the little tag of FS (1) is reserved for some other group, I am sorry. I didn't know, and I use FS1 as my normal name to use on any forum or site is Farae Slayer.

World Size: Large
Map: Continents
Difficulty: Noble
Sea Level: Normal
Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Victory Options: No Space Race, No Time. And no Diplomacy.
AI: 11

Rules: While all victory options are enabled besides Space Race, Time, and Diplomacy, we personally MUST win by culture. In addition, we must force at least 4 (we could change that number if it is too many or too few ^_^) cities to flip via culutre. We are however free to conquer as much as we want.

Civ: Frederick of Germany.

Roster: (Closed)

1) pessimist
2) Farae (too busy!)
3) S.ilver (up?)
4) ucel
5) Liquidated
6) ndthsmdy

 

[S.ilver]

I'll join in. As of Civ IV I find myself liking peaceful cultural victories more (seems I can't fight effectively yet with the new combat system).

I'm not very experienced though. Played a game on Warlord in Civ IV. At Civ 3 I played mostly at Warlord, though I won a few at Regeant. So hopefully there'll be a vet signing up to help us out.

 

[Farae]

Hopefully

 

[ndthsmdy]

I'd be interested in joining.

However...

1) I'm stuck with an ATI 7500 (the video that was supposed to work but didn't). As a result I'm playing by the grace of Sovz's temp fix and can see the whole map (just terrain--no yet-to-be-discovered resources or other civs). I of course pretend that I can't, but I still can, so...

2) My game has lately been crashing about 50% of the time when I convert a city or build a shrine.

I'll leave it up to you. Haven't done a SG yet, but I'm winning easily on Noble and am close to winning reliably on Prince.

 

[ucel]

Check me in if you want noble. Even as the first one. Hmm, maybe Arabia as a Civ? And why only 12 civs on large ?

 

[Liquidated]

ok Liq is clueless, just finally got out from the pc rebooting anytime ghandi looked my way so well behind on the civ4 learning curve.

New to all of this SG goodness (I'm so very impressed with it all honestly) but old to civ 1 and 2 (skipped 3).

I excell in infrastucture based goals but I'm a total stump when it comes to hostilities.

My basic skill level is strong warlord/ weak noble and well figure the best way to learn is jump into an SG.

If you want a noob, let me know!

I'm fluent instant message services and such for any hand holding/lashings needed lol.

Cheers!
-Liquidated

 

[pessimist]

I'm interested if you've still got room, although I can't claim any expert knowledge with culture victories. My vote would be for standard, continents, noble.

 

[ndthsmdy]

I also think four culture flips will make Noble plenty challenging

Creative has got to be the most important LT for this game, right? +2 culture per city and cheap theatres for artist specialists (read: culture bombs)? Unfortunately, no Creative civs start with Mysticism (even Hatty, Cre/Spir)

Frederick would be good (Cre/Phil). So would Cathy (Cre/Fin). But if the desire for religion trumps being creative, I'd agree you can't go wrong with Arabia.

 

[S.ilver]

You've got 6 replied Farae, and only 5 slots! What's going on? This game still on?

 

[Farae]

This game is still on, we just need a bit of aid, that's all.

Hm? I got 5 replies S.ilver, ndthsmdy just made a second reply.

If anyone who has signed up so far wasn't included on my roster, let me know!

 

[Farae]

Arabia is good for religion and Great People, but they focus on that soley. Creative, Spiritual, Philsophical, and maybe Financial or Organized for money. ^_^

1) Who of those who signed up actually has the game?

2) Who knows how to upload the game save to here and put the link on a post so everyone else can play it?

3) Who knows how to take pictures?

4) Who knows how to post pictures?

Any vets that see this topic, if you could answer #2 and #4 for me, I would be grateful!

As for me...

1) Yes.
2) Don't know how.
3) Know how.
4) Don't know how.

 

[S.ilver]

Oops! Maybe I should read screenames more closely .

And yeah, I can take the pictures, and I do have Civ IV. No idea how to mess with these forums though, as you can tell from my post count...

 

[Liquidated]

I'm easy whichever. 6 people are fine. If no vet joins in then well the odd lurker can always whack us over the head.

I've been goofing with the crash free game much to my sleep pattern's demise and tinkering with start games.

I really like the creative trait for the same reasons I like an early religion (hinduism my normal priority).

At the the start, the free culture expansions from creative makes a major difference in hooking up those just out of reach resources (the 2 to 5 square range). The half price theatre doesn;t really excite me since they are not too expensive to start with. I really like creative.

Snagging bud or Hin as a first religion has the same culture effect with the focus on the capitol. The addition of being in early control of temple creation is really nice for the happiness and minor culture. If you miss hindu though you have to devote more time to snag jud though which just delays development the spiritual trait really helps this.

Other traits I've been liking are philisopical and financial.

Phil is really nice if you can snag stone or oracle early on, as great priests just start chain popping. I'm still experimenting what to use great people for, an early perma specialist is really nice.

Saladin is nice as seen in sulla's walkthough for the spiritual/phili as those two dove tail nicely.

Financial is another favorite as coast/lake squares are nice as are spamming cottages if one is food wealthy. The extra commerce is really really nice in that it's very flexible in terms of culture/research/cash flow for the civ.

Cathrine's finacial/creative combo is a ton of fun escially if one can start near a lake or coast as shooting for hindu is not too bad odds even without mystisim. From there, mass commerce can really make theatres and collosiums viable happyness tools.

Still trying to wrap my head around the peacful traits and how they combine.

oh btw ndthsmdy if you still having crashing issues shoot me a pm, I just got out from under that rock the other day using an ati 9800 pro. I may be able to help a bit.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Farae]

Hm...

Creative- That culture boost is NICE.

Spiritual- No anarchy is a HUGE benefit and it REALLY helps religion founding and spreading.

Financial- Money money!

Organized- If we need expensive civics, this REALLY helps us cut costs.

Philsophical- Nice Great Person bonus, and it does aid religion. ^_^

Hm...which to choose?

 

[Farae]

Ok, I balanced it out and I think we should go with either Hetshupsut of Eygpt or Louis XIV of France.

Hatty- Hatty is Creative and Spiritual, thus giving her the edge to found religions and build places of faith at low cost. She is also creative, giving a nice culture boost and allowing us to build theatres and collesums at half cost, which both aid culture. This allows us to combine religion and normal buildings for a solid move. We can also keep growing during turns that would otherwise be spent in fruiltless anarchy, so this is a MAJOR plus.

Louis- Louis is Organized and Creative. The Creative trait adds the above mentioned bonuses and we can focus om expanding and building lots of culture buildings to take the win. He is Organized and this will save lots of costs. Where he cannot switch to something without anarchy, he can make use of the civics like Organized Religion or Caste System which normally drain funds. He can build lighthouses for coastal growth at half cost, and courthouses at half cost as well for reducing maitenance.

EDIT: There is ONE downside to both of them. Though they are REALLY useful for Cultural Victories, neither start with Mysticism.

1) We can research a later religion.

2) We can just research it, hope for the best and shoot for Hindiuism, if we fail, take Judaism, if failing that, take Christianity or Confucianism. We WILL get a religion, we just need to do our best.

3) One more thing, are we playing on Noble or Prince?

 

[Farae]

Hm. I will use this post to test how to upload a picture.

Edit: YES! I got it to work!

The way I did it was simple; register an account at Photo Bucket, and IT'S FREE. Upload the file there, then copy the URL they give it. Use the "Insert Image" button when making your post, paste in the URL and voila! ^_^

 

[ndthsmdy]

2) Who knows how to upload the game save to here and put the link on a post so everyone else can play it?

4) Who knows how to post pictures?

2) Haven't done it personally yet, but apparently all you really need to do is zip the file, click on Manage Attachments when you post, and go on from there.

4) You have to find a place to host your pics. You can get a free account at Photobucket (www.photobucket.com) which has worked nicely for me. Then you just copy and paste the img link into your post.

Hm...which to choose?

Philosophical, if it is managed right, is actually better than Creative for the cultural victory. +2 culture per city * 350 turns + multipliers comes out to 1,000-1,500 extra culture per city (2-3% of needed total). Each Great Artist, though, is worth 4,000 culture minimum (more if used as a super specialist), so if you milk 2-3 more Artists than you usually would via Phil it comes out to more like 5-8%.

It seems like Creative (while certainly not hurting in an attempt for cultural victory ) would be more useful in dealing with the four-flips requirement. Depending on how many civs are close to us, we may have to flip a city early, then turn it around from having 0 culture (once we've flipped it) to being able to flip another, older city Creative would be pretty essential in that regard.

Then there's religion. I may not be giving it its fair due, since that bug in my game has forced me to play a lot of games without it, but I'm not sure being Spiritual just to ensure an early religion is going to outweigh the benefits of Phil or Cre. An early religion is going to make us want to make Great Prophets, when what we really want is lots of Artists. And if the cards play out right, we may get a chance to take one from another civ anyway

So I guess my vote would be for Frederick (Phil/Cre), or Saladin (Phil/Spir) if we decide we want to go Spir. Keep in mind the Cre/Spir leader (Hatty) does NOT start with Mysticism...

1) Farae
2) S.ilver
3) ndthsmdy
4) ucel
5) Liquidated
6) pessimist

You may want to consider putting me last, since I'll be able to see the map and should probably do as little exploration as possible

 

[Farae]

Spiritual however goes with no anarchy. Thus we can switch religions and civics without any restrictions other then we can't switch again for 5 turns.

Mysticism is an easy tech to get, though it will hurt our progress to Buddhism or Hinduism. You may be right with the points you made, but I don't know about Saladin, Creative is a useful trait. And Frederick will have Anarchy.

We have time, I hope that everyone will contribute thoughts on who to pick so we can get underway.

BTW, that roster is NOT the permanent order. I need EVERYONE to tell me if they have the game and if they are having any technical problems, and if they will be away for more then 3 days or so. I think I can manage this.

 

[S.ilver]

Spiritual is good for the lack of anarchy. The question is, will we be switching civics around a lot this game? I mean, of course our goal is cultural dominance, but we may still have to fight people (or at least maintain a decent standing military).

Also, it would also be very nice to found 2 or more religions, as mass building of temples will allow us to throw up the super temples in more than a few places (and maybe stack them too).

I've not yet played a game as Saladin, however, from his traits, it seems that he may be what we want to get this done as painlessly as possible.

 

[Farae]

Spiritual is good for the lack of anarchy. The question is, will we be switching civics around a lot this game? I mean, of course our goal is cultural dominance, but we may still have to fight people (or at least maintain a decent standing military).

Also, it would also be very nice to found 2 or more religions, as mass building of temples will allow us to throw up the super temples in more than a few places (and maybe stack them too).

I've not yet played a game as Saladin, however, from his traits, it seems that he may be what we want to get this done as painlessly as possible.

IF we get into war, Spiritual allows us to switch from say a peace trait like Pacifism to a war trait like Theocracy.

I have no objections to Saladin, though we must consider our choice carefully.

While pondering the Civ choice, lets get our map parameters confirmed.

I say a large world. With 12 AI. Any objections? Anyone scared if their comps will slow too much?

I also suggest continents. I have the utter inability to be good at maintaining an advanced and narge navy, and how can we culture flip on archipleago? Lakes would be fine, but without any oceans there is no safety measure of decent isolation. Then again, it might help reduce our navy size. On continents, we get a measure of protection from some nations but we get other nations to attack with culture. We must be careful though and seal off areas for our use.

Now as for victory conditions, we are NOT being threatened by Time, and Space Race is too simple for the AI to score. Diplomacy might be bad, so we should consider disabling it.

Also, who knows how to draw dotmaps? I tried once on Paint, but my hand was too wobbly to get a straight line. There must be a program or function to make it easy to make dotmaps.