GOTM 04 - Pre-Game Discussion

[Goodenuf]

... and as for those who wont play because it's 'too hard'... what a lost opportunity to learn this game. Not only is the map itself a challenge, but you have a host of experts playing as well, and documenting their strategies for you to study... what better way to learn?

If you get smoked, so be it. Swallow your pride and try the map again (but don't submit it ), and use some of these strategies to improve your play.

just my $0.02 worth... step of soapbox now.

 

[Jeff1787]

Ronald, thanks for the map. I have started a couple of games. So far, I think researching fishing and then polytheism might be the way to go. After researching fishing, work the two clams and getting polytheism is then doable. But that is if going for early religion. Big decision for me. I have never won on Emperor.

 

[greentea]

To the more experienced emperor players (this will be my first game):
Will you go for the Oracle on this start? And if you do, what tech do you aim to get - CoL/Monarchy/Alphabet/Metal Casting? Also, what is the typical AI completion date? I consistently get it before 1500BC in my tests, but to the sacrifice of early expansion. Can I take the risk of putting another settler (usually have only one new town when I complete it) before it and still hope to get it?
My tech path is Fishing->Poly->BW->Wheel->Priesthood->Writing (for CoL).
Build is sth like warrior, warrior, boat, worker, boat, axeman (assuming copper), settler, (maybe sth to time with Writing), Oracle. How does that sound?

 

[RoddyVR]

i LOVE going for early religeons. i've had 18 player games where i had 6 of the 7 religeons.
but to even attempt it on anything above noble, requires atleast a river, if not a river with a gold hill on it (with financial civ....) so i dont think i'll try it this time.

That is not entirely true. You can go to the "Top 5 cities/Wonders" on the first turn and see the name of the capitals of the other civs

i think that's the hint of the month for me. THANKS. never even thought about it. will help a lot in determining my tech order.

 

[Jeff1787]

I have started several games now. To get polytheism first, the odds are about 50/50 with 80% research rate. However, if you are lucky enough to get money from a hut, you can increase research back to 100% and then getting polytheism before the AI is a pretty sure thing....

 

[toller pretzl]

I also played Ronalds map, using the same strategy as before. Now if only my GOTM will start this well :

3880 92 gold from a hut
3800 Bronze Working from a hut, adopt slavery, send second warrior exploring
3720 Fishing
3400 First clams cultivated
3360 (Buddhisn founded in a distant land)
3240 India founds Hinduism
3040 Second clams cultivated
2960 Masonry
2760 Fast worker starts mining copper next to Delhi (Thanks Ronald)
2600 Convert to Hinduism, to support a size 4 capitol without a garrison; sending my two warriors home
2560 India founds Judaism; convert to Organized religion
2400 India completes Stonehenge
2320 The Wheel
2280 Barracks
2120 Hunting
2000 First Axeman, Combat I
1960 Largest civs in the world: India comes in last; Delhi will be size six soon though, thanks to Furs.
1880 First Settler

 

[greentea]

I also got BW from a hut once on Ronald's map and restarted immediately

 

[Memphus]

Memphus,

Can you tell us which techs you reserched, and which you traded for?

Thanks

Sure:
The techs I reasearched were:
Relating to this post

Fishing
Meditation
Priesthood
Writing
Alphabet
CoL
Monarchy (I wouldn't do this normally cause the AI reasearches it, but I needed the extra from defensive units to keep growing for the OCC)
Bureacracy (Oracle)
Philosophy (5 turns left...and I do get it first = 3 religions in one city )

Which means I traded for everything else:
Note some of my trades were not as good as they should be because
1. Hathesput wouldn't trade (different religions)
2. I only had met 2 other civs (Elizabeth, Cyrus), because I didn't explore

So at this point in the game I was the tech leader with 1 city, lots of money in the bank and could pump out 3 axemen every 5 turns

Oh I am praying for us to not be on an island

 

[toller pretzl]

I also got BW from a hut once on Ronald's map and restarted immediately

Ah, but it's not in my starting strategy anyway so.. Without BW I would have researched archery after hunting, and still been secure from the barbarians.

 

[Ribannah]

Played Ronalds map again. This time we started on Meditation right away, found the two huts and got some gold, and managed to get Buddhism. Two turns later the AI already had Judaism, presumably from a hut. By the year 2000bc there was no more land. Egypt and England had taken most of it, and in the tundra barb Archers had killed all my forested-hill-fortified Warriors without a dent, leaving us with no military.

 

[jayeffaar]

You can go to the "Top 5 cities/Wonders" on the first turn and see the name of the capitals of the other civs. It won't tell you what the leader of those civs are, but you will know what civs you are facing (most of the at least). That should give you a better is it is worth going for an early religion or not.

I never thought of doing that either, and that could be a vital tip for this game.

On the other hand, it also sounds like a bit of an exploit. There's obviously no way to disallow it since that would be completely unenforcable but that they should fix in a patch. There really should be no way to know who the other civs are before you meet them.

 

[Thrallia]

thanks everyone who posted in response to my mini rant...it was the middle of the night, I was tired(stupid research papers and stupid me for waiting till last minute to write it), and I guess something I read on here or somewhere else got me frustrated...so I wrote that.

It is true that I am a noob to emperor, but as far as Civ IV goes, I've had the game since release and I've been into civ period since 1997, so...I guess I interpreted noob(which on some boards I frequent is an insult) to mean that we didn't know much about civ. So sorry everyone had to read that, and I'm all better now

I played another test opening going fishing then poly
the RNG screwed me up again by giving me fishing from a hut! So I got hinduism easily.
I had found Hatty's cultural borders were already touching Delhi's borders(she started like 8 squares from me) so I wondered how aggressive these AI were. I had a single warrior still, and declared war on her. My warrior reached her capital, in which I found a settler and 4 archers. He died, obviously. I then sat in my capital...building nothing but wonders and researching stuff. I managed to found Judaism, build Stonehenge, and pyramids, and last about 2000 years before Hatty ever got around to invading my territory and taking Delhi, which was undefended that entire time. No barbs ever approached either.

So apparently, at least early on, we shouldn't have much to worry about in terms of aggression from anyone but an aggressive leader.

 

[Thrallia]

I never thought of doing that either, and that could be a vital tip for this game.

On the other hand, it also sounds like a bit of an exploit. There's obviously no way to disallow it since that would be completely unenforcable but that they should fix in a patch. There really should be no way to know who the other civs are before you meet them.

that has always been something you could do...in Civ I, II, and III you could do that on any difficulty level as well...for some reason I just completely forgot that you could do that when I started playing Civ IV

 

[jayeffaar]

@ Thrallia (talking about going to the Top 5 Cities screen early on to see who else is in the game)

Yup, I vaguely remember seeing something like that in previous games but playing by myself, I always made a point of not looking until I had met everybody, because it felt like something I wasn't supposed to know. For the GOTM, since I can't expect everybody else to play by those rules and since that info could be so vital, I think I'll use the tip and take a peek right at the start.

Us nOObs need all the help we can get.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I never thought of doing that either, and that could be a vital tip for this game.

On the other hand, it also sounds like a bit of an exploit. There's obviously no way to disallow it since that would be completely unenforcable but that they should fix in a patch. There really should be no way to know who the other civs are before you meet them.

The counter-argument is that you can trade with other civs - even have diplomatic negotiations with them - without knowing where any of their cities are. Civ does give you odd bits of information (eg. 'Judaism has been founded in a faraway land') which I guess represents rumour and hearsay spreading, without you knowing quite where the story originated. It seems plausible that you could have through these channels that 'There's this fantastic city called Berlin'. I'd therefore be inclined to treat this not as an exploit but as one of many sources of information the game provides that a skilled player can use to piece together some picture of likely opponents. The fact that it tells you the city names but doesn't show pictures of the cities you can't see tends to support that too.

 

[kingjoshi]

I tried Roland's map (thanks btw). Played until 700AD. And Hatty led in score throughout. I built only four cities, and they were pretty close to the capital (tile overlap). Hatty founded like 5 religions, built like 10 wonders, etc. However, I was second in gold so I was at a decent tech pace. I caught up with alphabet and traded techs to maintain ahead of some and always behind others. Hatty was in the lead and her cities culture were crazy (the border one had Oracle and Thebes had thre wonders).

How do people build the Pyramids? So many hammers needed..

And when you trade techs, what do you do if you can get nothing for a tech but you know that in a few turns, the AI will get them and you get nothing in return? I gifted a couple and because of that I was able to be gifted a couple in return. I think I might try more of that. For example, I got Mathematics from trading but I could leverage it to trade for Currency or anything else the other AIs had (I was on good terms with everyone). Waiting for my next tech to combine them worked sometimes, but often not. By that time, they would already have gotten Mathematics. So, would you gift those techs if you want to go for Diplomatic victory? Or continue to not give in just to slow the AI down? Also, gifting something prevents the AI from asking it from you in the first place (if you happen to have a weak military).

EDIT: I also tried a couple other games with the same settings. Very diverse maps! One seemed like an archipelago one. Many tiny islands and a couple long stringy ones with Aztecs on my land border! First time on emporer so just like the upgrades to Prince and Monarch, I'm hoping to surprise myself..

 

[emills]

With 5 food sources (2 clam, 1 cow, 1 deer and 1 fresh water lake), the starting location is a monster for early game people units (settler/worker) production and hammer production. The deer and cow will give hammers too.

With 3 health resources, only happiness will be an issue. Trade the spare clams for happiness to help make an early friend. It almost has too much early health (the two forests also equals one health) to justify a granery or a harbor, but I would get these and hold off on the aquaduct. The granery will help for pop rushing and the harbor will bring in money.

Getting someone else's religion is easy with a coastal city. Keep borders closed until you have settled all that you can, then open up and the trade routes (sailing and harbor at compass) will do the rest.

My tech path most likely will be: fishing, BW, animal husbandry, wheel, hunting, archery, pottery, sailing, iron working, writing, metal casting, alphabet. At alphabet, start trading for all of the other techs using alphabet and metal casting.

Strategic and happiness resources have been sparce on in my experience on the higher levels, although my guess is that there will be horses within the fat cross.

My experience at the emporer level is that I usually do not have a chance at any early wonder. Being ghandi with the misticism, is it reliable or worth it to go after stonehenge? When in the build order? I think I am just going to focus on expansion first.

 

[kingjoshi]

With with Hatty building all the wonders in my test game, I was still easily able to get Stonehedge, without stone. But that's partly due to the mined copper in Roland's map. With mined hills, cows, deers and plain hills city tile, that's 9 base hammers. One more and you have 15 hammers with the Industrious civ trait. That's 12 turns for Stonehedge. One tree chop if your definitely want it and it should be no problem. Worse case, you get gold and can bump up research.

Once I get Forges and Organized religion, I might go for another wonder.

 

[Thrallia]

emills...in all 12 or 13 of my practice games I was able to build stonehenge, even after building a couple warriors first

in a couple of them, I got pyramids too...but I think those were luck, since I never get pyramids on lower difficulty lol

 

[DynamicSpirit]

How do people build the Pyramids? So many hammers needed..

By chopping forests like anything. Normally I look for a spot that would make a very good commerce-centre city, but happens to have lots of forests that will need to be chopped anyway before it can become a commerce city. If there's a risk of destroying too much future production there, I'll just alternatively chop some forests that are never going to be in its city radius, but are close enough that that's the city the hammers will go to. (Especially if it's a forest that'll otherwise fall into someone elses cultural borders - kill two birds with one stone, so to speak ) Also, if I see stone anywhere that I can reasonably build a city, I'll beeline for it. If I can get organized religion and/or stone, I'll usually do those before I chop the forests for the pyramids, so I get more hammers with each chop. Also, while I'm building something like that, I look very closely at the tiles being worked - if necessary, even manually changing them around so the city is starving, but producing its maximum possible hammers by eg. working nothing but mined hills.