G-Major 107

[Bugio]

Thanks Kovacsflo for the write up. Looking at it i see my error: teching to jumbos before striking. I start attacking at around 100AD, instead i should try to pin down a couple AIs camping their metal and HA them in the BCs. Also i should NOT include mansa in this, the bastard advance everybody too quickly, in my game he got feudalism around 200bc despite being at war with shaka.

As for your crash issues, yes win7 is pretty good (hope you're using 64bit), but looks like yours aren't software problems. Civ CTD are memory issues, being it HD/RAM or possibly cache/CPU related. You should try stress test your components and see what results you get, programs like HDtune for hard disk and prime95 for RAM and CPU. If you're able to stress test these componets (make a night long test for each component) without errors, the you should consider formatting and reinstalling everything. You could also increase voltage to RAM in the BIOS setup, but beware: it will increase heat generation i won't do that unless you have a good cooling system and in any case i won't go over 2,1/2,2V. Tweaking BIOS settings can help a lot, but premade PCs/laptops won't have much customization there.

 

[ZPV]

If it's primarily from Alt-Tab, then the issue is almost certainly that the game reloads all the graphics at once when you do that, and your poor graphics card can't take it.
Playing in windowed mode helps a lot with that.

(I assume you've done the usual things of playing about with compatibility mode settings, reducing graphics to the minimum, disabling animations, not having other big memory hogs running at the same time, etc.)

 

[Kaitzilla]

DeGaulle is my new favorite AI. I stole 4 workers from him at the start of my game and would have stolen a 5th but he moved his archer to the perfect spot at the last moment.

Most Deity AI's won't even talk to you after a worker steal, but over and over again he signed cease fires and sent a worker to that 2nd border-ring corn. The best part is I suffered no diplo penalties because all the peaceful AI hated him.

I'll have to check if "Agressive AI" had anything to do with the easy ceasefires.

 

[ZPV]

DeGaulle is my new favorite AI. I stole 4 workers from him at the start of my game and would have stolen a 5th but he moved his archer to the perfect spot at the last moment.

Most Deity AI's won't even talk to you after a worker steal, but over and over again he signed cease fires and sent a worker to that 2nd border-ring corn. The best part is I suffered no diplo penalties because all the peaceful AI hated him.

I'll have to check if "Agressive AI" had anything to do with the easy ceasefires.

It does. Threaten their city (i.e. move your warrior within a 2-tile radius) and they will CF with AggAI.

 

[Kaitzilla]

It does. Threaten their city (i.e. move your warrior within a 2-tile radius) and they will CF with AggAI.

Thanks

I just checked the ultimate worker stealing guide and AggAI is mentioned there too.

Sometimes I read things without really understanding them fully.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Someone put up an insane game. 900AD isn't good enough for first place

 

[Manco Capac]

^
What starting era did you choose?

Most Deity AI's won't even talk to you after a worker steal, but over and over again he signed cease fires ...

Ancient Start! That is preposterous!

 

[kovacsflo]

^
What starting era did you choose?



Ancient Start! That is preposterous!

An normal deity victory with an ancient start? Congratulations! I thought none of us will manage to do that with Zara (who is a non-financial bloody bustard). Any details to share?

 

[Kaitzilla]

^
What starting era did you choose?

Yup ancient start. Ended up having a few friendly civs giving me WFYABTA near the end. I now have documented proof that getting a civ to Friendly doesn't remove it.

 

[ZPV]

Yup ancient start. Ended up having a few friendly civs giving me WFYABTA near the end. I now have documented proof that getting a civ to Friendly doesn't remove it.

If you have vassals (or a permanent alliance), Friendly doesn't mean Friendly. They have to be Friendly to all of you.

 

[Kaitzilla]

If you have vassals (or a permanent alliance), Friendly doesn't mean Friendly. They have to be Friendly to all of you.

Doh!

 

[Kaitzilla]

An normal deity victory with an ancient start? Congratulations! I thought none of us will manage to do that with Zara (who is a non-financial bloody bustard). Any details to share?

It was an absurd game. I got an amazing capital to start with, wet corn +3 gold+Phill to settle on. I almost abandoned it because I wanted to try a 650 tile map but figured a 950 tile map is worth doing with such a good start.

Stole 4 workers from DeGaulle at the start and nearly got a 5th.
Decided to do a Horse Archer rush against DeGaulle since no bronze or elephants.
Barely missed Oracle and nearly quit again, but decided to keep going.

Attacked Joao to steal his Pyramids city(Capital). He made peace with Ghandi and retaliated against me. I gave the Pyramids city to Ghandi and healed up my army there where Joao couldn't touch me. Switched to Representation but giving away the Pyramids flipped me back to my previous civic I think.
After vassaling Joao and killing off DeGaulle, took back the Pyramids city.
Mansa Musa backstabbed me while I was fighting Ghandi and sent a big army right at my capital and Heroic Epic city. I was totally surprised and quit for a day in a huff.

Came back the next day, vassaled Ghandi, lost a major city to Mansa, ended up beating Mansa by whipping the entire empire down to the ground. After that it was a pretty standard capitulation snowball. Built 0 cottages. All research was done with bulbing, conquest gold, and manipulating vassals.

Didn't really use Oromo warriors. They are best with cannons or performing defense against a staggering amount of siege. Ended with a mass Knights charge. Vassals had Curaissers but I had no way to get Military tradition from them without more time.

 

[Manco Capac]

Kai is da best! As usual!
Indeed, ancient start dom on a large map <1000 AD is mighty impressive.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Congratulions Kaitzilla on your impressive AD 900 win!

Too bad you didn't reach Gunpowder. A highly promoted Oromo Warrior like Combat II Pinch Drill IV can easily kill a Rifleman Combat I unit on the flat, fortified (if I recall correctly) and it often does so with minimal damage (4-7 first strikes is hard to defend against). Even Infantry is not too hard to kill with Oromo Warriors provided one has adequate Cannon support.

Do we know yet who is in the lead? Its not me.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Manco Capac]

If you have vassals (or a permanent alliance), Friendly doesn't mean Friendly. They have to be Friendly to all of you.

In fact, they are still friendly in some respect IIRC of what I read (but not tested yet); a many functions are calling team function, so averaging qualitative attitude (e.g. ANNOYED+PLEASED=CAUTIOUS). Thus will affect OB, tech tradings, resource sharing, amp sharing and possible WHEOON upon the human player (Note that AI's are not affected by such bizarre implementation devs imagined to thwart run away human player). Interestingly, some actions are still valued as normal like begging and vote for U.N. or AP.

If it avers true for diplomatic victories, then at least the devs were less crazy than I thought.

Attacked Joao to steal his Pyramids city(Capital).

Again! I remember that happened too in that 900k score game with preats.
Indeed, the AggAI use was a very well-thought strategy. You just invented a usable personal rule just as Moonsinger did with perpetual anarchy while campaigning.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Indeed, the AggAI use was a very well-thought strategy. You just invented a usable personal rule just as Moonsinger did with perpetual anarchy while campaigning.

Is that what Moonsinger did in some of her Marathon Conquest wins to avoid economic crashes and unit strikes?

BTW, I'm never going meet even the delayed deadline for this gauntlet. So whoever is #1 now, you won't see competition from me, until after the gauntlet is closed. I didn't submit a single win again, but I did leave about six games half finished. They were all winnable, but I made some early blunder or had especially bad luck (ever lose two seige unit attacks in a row at 97% odds of causing defender damage and not even scratch the defender, who didn't even have a single Drill promotion? [combined odds of this happening is 3/100 * 3/100 = 9/10,000] I did in one game - the RNG gods were probably enraged by my poor play and thought I needed to be taught the lesson that lightning can and does strike twice on the same spot seconds apart).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Kaitzilla]

Is that what Moonsinger did in some of her Marathon Conquest wins to avoid economic crashes and unit strikes?
Sun Tzu Wu

Yes, she pioneered the strategy of perpetual anarchy while chopping all the forests to produce units the one turn she wasn't in anarchy.

This was such a strong strategy that is was banned by the HOF, but I think the games that utilized it in the past were allowed to stay.


**Edit**

Ok, my memory is a bit fuzzy it seems. The GOTM staff thinks it is an exploit here, but I don't see it banned in HOF rules. I suspect it is banned somewhere. Maybe perpetual anarchy was for Vanilla and BTS changed something to fix it so that it was never an issue again.

HOF is a gentleman's game, so it goes without saying don't use an exploit as it ruins the spirit of the thing completely. Anything that breaks the game such as -deleted- is common sense an exploit so don't do it.

 

[Manco Capac]

Hmmm. What would be that -deleted- thing you had in mind? Something we saw in our SGOTM team?
No need to be more precise if you want to avoid spreading diseases of cheating or unfair play, but I really am curious if you were referring to what we found altogether, but refused to use it.

You don't mind I call you the pioneer of interesting use of AggAI in my worker stealing article. That was indeed one thing I didn't know or simply deduced out of logics. Still, normally, I wonder if AI spamming more units on deity is that good generally...on random maps. Still, IIRC, AggAI isn't that terrible in terms of spamming value. I think it adds one more point out of 10. So, a gandhi with 20% spamming, may spam barely more 3%, thus 23%.

Hmmm, Kaitzilla! You sparkle a new craze about mechanics now. I want to know what is exactly AggAI.
In the past, AggAI meant getting negmods for the human player only (some sort of AW correspondence, but in terms of diplomacy), making the AI harder to befriend or ANNOYED fast with few diplo gaffes, triggering unwanted wars.
Indeed, this was better implemented in term of challenge. Now, it only slow down the tech rate due to AI's focusing too much on units than infra.

 

[ZPV]

Hmmm, Kaitzilla! You sparkle a new craze about mechanics now. I want to know what is exactly AggAI.
In the past, AggAI meant getting negmods for the human player only (some sort of AW correspondence, but in terms of diplomacy), making the AI harder to befriend or ANNOYED fast with few diplo gaffes, triggering unwanted wars.
Indeed, this was better implemented in term of challenge. Now, it only slow down the tech rate due to AI's focusing too much on units than infra.

Here are the notes I took prior to SGOTM15:

Effects of Aggressive AI:


----PlayerAI----
Less likely to ban nukes with UN.
They will use spies to hurt you even if they like you.
Less likely to choose diplo-boosting random event choices.
Less likely to pursue a cultural victory.
More likely to pursue nuke strategy (i.e. greater chance of building nukes).
Slightly less likely to pursue dagger strategy on high levels.
More likely to pursue crush strategy.
Wants more floating defenders.
----TeamAI----
More likely to use AREAAI_MASSING rather than AREAAI_DEFENSIVE
More likely to go to war to get over domination threshold.
Less likely to end a war when threatening more enemy cities, than own cities are threatened.
Much more likely to start a Max War
----CityAI----
AI willing to spend more gpt on units.
----UnitAI----
Settlers don't retreat to city
Units very occasionally conisder to worker-steal

 

[Kaitzilla]

Hehe, you can credit me if you wish, though I doubt I'm the first person to discover it.

Maybe it only works on cowardly AI like DeGaulle. Still though, a powerful option on Deity, being able to halt a war after a worker steal before Alphabet. I think it needs more testing before it can be called a strategy.

Proof that it was done once at least:

Spoiler :

The very next turn a 5th worker appeared on that corn and the French archer disappeared (1N1E). If I hadn't been paying attention I would have seen another defenseless worker and taken it. The archer would have killed my warrior + new worker and I would have had a very very long war with Deity France after that. (Such a trap for the unwary!)