G-Major 20

[Harbourboy]

At last. That took FOREVER. I ended up with 73 Future Techs.

The biggest pain (other than the amount of time this took) was all the SPYING. Every turn I would have a farm destroyed, even though I had all the espionage buildings plus 30 of my own spies stationed in my cities. I had thousands more espionage points than my enemies but they still managed to ravage me with espionage every turn. Does the AI cheat when it comes to espionage (e.g. being able to do it for free), because I don't see they could possibly have afforded to do so much spying.

 

[shyuhe]

They probably all concentrated their EP on you but you had to spread your EP across multiple AI.

 

[Harbourboy]

But I had over three times the EP of every single individual AI (because I was so much bigger than them all). I thought that would make their missions prohibitively expensive?

 

[Airny]

Does "highest score wins" mean the civ4-score or the modified QScore. I'm mostly relating to barbarians setting. Sorry about this question, I'm really a bit out of the game atm.

 

[Denniz]

Does "highest score wins" mean the civ4-score or the modified QScore. I'm mostly relating to barbarians setting. Sorry about this question, I'm really a bit out of the game atm.

Civ4 Score. QScore is only used for ranking in Quattromasters.

 

[shyuhe]

But I had over three times the EP of every single individual AI (because I was so much bigger than them all). I thought that would make their missions prohibitively expensive?

They may have been performing missions so frequently that they didn't accumulate lots of EP points. The cost increase from EP differential could have been offset by stationary spies too.

 

[cabert]

+ destroying a farm isn't really expensive.

In my attempt in BtS I conducted counterspying missions every time it was possible on the only AI I didn't attack.

 

[Harbourboy]

Destroying farms every turn was just extremely painful from a real-time perspective when you're trying to finish the cursed gauntlet as quickly as possible and you always have half a dozen cities in starvation.

 

[pholtz]

I don't know why, but I didn't have much of a problem here. Yes, I occasionally got a farm destroyed, or a few times a building destroyed. But by then I had enough idle workers, that the farm would back up and running in a turn or two.

A possible idea, create a spy and leave it in the city. I dont' know if this affects any sabotage in the fat cross though.

 

[Harbourboy]

I had two spies in each and every city!

Hey! My result is 8th. How can I not be last? Beyond the Sword must give higher results for me to not be last.

 

[FiveAces]

Everything else equal, BTS will give higher score than vanilla/warlords because pop is bigger (food from corps), more future techs (more pop and more turns) and more wonders. But don't discount that you might just have played a higher-scoring game than someone else, no matter how you think you fared.

 

[Harbourboy]

Everyone else seemed to get 400 future techs but I only got 73.

 

[FiveAces]

Well some of those games turned into dom wins so they won't show up, and those with 400 FT's are more likely to post about it than those with say, 4. You can check the HoF to see how you compare to the published games if you want - I'm guessing with 73 you outscored some BTS games, as well as some van/WL.

 

[bestje]

@harbourboy what final score did you get?
My game in 7th I had researched 57 future techs so not sure how much they actually count for.

Is there a guide out there that explains exactly how scoring works?

 

[cabert]

pop counts more than techs.
so if harbourboy went for a sure win (not risking the settler spam), he will have less points than you if you settler spammed

 

[bestje]

I didn't settler spam either was worried about hitting the domination limit, I played this game before the settler spam strategy got explained.

 

[Andrei_V]

I finally finished my game with 19747, currently 2nd.

I guess I did everything wrong this time. I played Peter rather than Elizabeth. I built the Pyramids but forgot to switch to Representation for something like 500 years. I built Oxford in 670AD (some 500 years later than usual) due to poor forest chopping management in one of the new cities.

I took Refrigeration with Liberalism rather than Superconductors. I went for Cavalries after that rather than before (I could have killed a couple of rival civs by the time of building UBs.)

I founded Mining Inc and Cereal Inc in different cities rather than group them in my Holy Shrine city and build Wall Street there. I spread them to AIs (should have spread other corps), so two of them launched Space Ship, and two more were dangerously close.

I started replacing Workshops and Cottages by farms way too early, so my economy was badly damaged in the mid 1900s. Replacing forest preserves with farms around the capital (with National Park) was perhaps the most stupid idea.

I bulbed FTs early instead of saving GPs for the last turn, when the pop is max.

I started final conquest too early, and I was so stupid as to capture Sistine Chapel. Sure, some of the cities started popping borders, and I had to sue for peace and return them to the AIs to avoid Domination.

I still managed to get around 340 FTs.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

I finally finished my game with 19747, currently 2nd.

I started final conquest too early, and I was so stupid as to capture Sistine Chapel. Sure, some of the cities started popping borders, and I had to sue for peace and return them to the AIs to avoid Domination.

Did you capture all of the AI's grown cities at the end to boost your pop? You weren't unnerved by the stories of domination on the last turn instead of time victories?

 

[Andrei_V]

Did you capture all of the AI's grown cities at the end to boost your pop? You weren't unnerved by the stories of domination on the last turn instead of time victories?

Yes, I tried to capture as many AI cities as possible, they don't add too much to land area until border expansion. Without that freaking Sistine I could have captured a lot more, without hitting Domination 2-3 turns before the end. But with Sistine, they pop borders on the next turn, adding like 1% land each.

 

[shyuhe]

I razed the Sistine in my game. I didn't build it intentionally and I was planning to pick it up later but I forgot to mark the city so it got razed during my wars. Ooops