Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter LXXIV: Hammurabi

[TheMeInTeam]

In this game I got civil service ----> optics (meet AI) ----> lib (astro) ~800-900 AD. I didn't use marines/fighter/destro this time though...managed to get a rifle/cannon window and take full abuse the entire game...finishing using arty + draft rifles.

 

[krikav]

extra commerece, shared flood plains and fresh water which made sense over 1 extra food.

I don't question your ability to make judgements, given your priorities, you did made sound decisions!
I just believe that your prioritization is dead wrong!

I would strongly advice you to pay more attention to the food of the map.
Blocking out strong food resources is, imho, a mortal sin!
A city with only a food resource can still hire specialists. A fish that has 6 food is paying for 2 specialists by itself, so in essence, a fish is 3 strong tiles.

 

[ecuwins]

@ ecuwins

I will try your (and TMIT's) strat out I think.... I did it a long time ago and was amazed at how well it worked then never did it again.

Spoiler :

Since I'm not great in isolation I never (on Immortal) have a Cavalry window - seems like I can get Cavalry or Astronomy and Galleons before they get Rifling but not both.

What is your tech order for this???
For what? Calvary rush or flight war? For the rest of this post, I'm assuming flight war. Post Lib it was something like - Econ > Corp > Chem > Assy Line > Railroad > Bio > Combustion > Industrialism

Galleons first to upgrade?
Not this time, Factories and Drydocks.

Marines first, Destroyers first?
I upgraded maybe eight Frigates, but most of those stayed behind anyway for defense. So, Destroyers in the Drydock cities, and Marines in the others.

Did you have a tech lead when you attacked?
Yes, except for Saladin, but he still crumbled pretty easily. The beautiful thing about this tactic is the planes, you can rebase them from anywhere!

If so did you just use Bureaucracy/Oxford cap and overseas trade routes to tech?
Yes. Plus, trade missions, and hammering out wealth/research. My slider was at 100% for most of the game.

You went for Rep so did you use farms only outside cap?
Farms and workshops.

See this for more information.

 

[mtr12]

How exactly DOES a Cav Rush work? You can't really do much against massed CG Rifles backed by Cannons. I mean, Cuirs get to beat up on medieval units, but Cavs don't.

Unless you're using them to beat up on crap continents still using Longbows for defense.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Most high level players reach cavalry before the AI gets rifles, yes.

The answer then is largely chain whipping.

I did something similar but with draft rifles...and I too manage to cut someone down before they got rifling, setting the stage for basically winning the map with rifles + cannon (later I built some arty also)

Fighting rifle era units w/o cannon is extremely costly though...unless you have cavalry + airships or some such with spies. It's all about finding that window and hitting hard ASAP.

 

[elohssa]

Today my laptop has finally stopped lagging (dunno why but some times it just randomly lags like hell) and I was able to blitz through the fun(attacking) part of the game. Unfortunately I didn't take too many screen-shots.

Spoiler 4, Emperor/Marathon (I shall skip spoiler 3 due to lack of screenshots)

Spoiler :

My poor diplomacy skills and general bad luck had created problems for me soon after the AIs started getting astronomy. I've had 2 daggers and 5 declarations on me in total before I started my attack(s). In summary everybody declared on me at least once apart from Saladin - who was the one bloke I spared in this domination victory.

The defensive phase of this game started poorly as isabella took one of my coastal cities with a surprise amphibious invasion (it was defended by a warrior ). After some quick whippage of crossbows I was able to fight off her macemen and retake the city before getting peace. After that my coastal cities were garrisoned much more securely and another 3 defensive wars later I looked in good shape, winning lib (could only manage nationalism with lib), getting to SP and getting my super-workshops up everywhere that wasn't cottaged (caste + state workshops). AS I started amassing my grenadiers napolean took one of my coastal cities with an amazingly stupid amphibeous invasion (about 20 elephants were sacrificed). After getting it back I sailed over to Napoleon and capped him with my grenadier rush. After that the game went quite quickly...

1. Capped Hannibal with grenadiers/rifles. He only has muskets/longbows.
2. Waited for infantry before capping Isabella. It was rifles vs infantry.
3. Capped Cathy with ease, although it took me a bit longer as I wanted to take over one of her high culture-cities, so I postponed accepting capitulation until St Petersburg was mine.
4. Capped Mehmed with infantry. He had rifles.
5. After being on 63.9%~ land for about 10 turns (constant revolts at about 1% chance) I finally got a breakthrough and got over that dom limit. I left Saladin alone as he was the only one who left me alone earlier on.

My war tactics involved using the aggressive trait to build amphibeous gunpowder units. These were used to destroy the "navy-stack" city of the AI on the first turn. Once the "navy-stack" city was down it was a case of cleaning up. I used the marathon game speed to my advantage by skipping over 2-move units. This also synargised well with my aggressive trait.

Some random screenshots taken after game was won...

Production city - 3/4 of my ground units came from here. It was the key to my victory. It had west point and HE.

 

[i_imperator]

I'm (and the other civ's on the map hehheh ) literally having a blast with this map, and I will upload the final images of my end game as soon as i have finished it. Its been a really crazy late game for me with this one...

 

[i_imperator]

So this game was the second game, of my return from my hiatus from civ. I started it about 3 weeks ago so i cant really remember most of the details before liberalism.
Monarch/Epic, Diplomation UN Win.

Spoiler :

Ok, I SIP and managed to get the Great Wall. I think I had about 8 cities by 70AD,
I was the first to liberalism and I think I took nationalism from it IICR.

I met the Other AI's around Lib, I decided, since it was Monarch/Epic, that i wanted to mess around with late game warfare, so I teched up to Battleships,destroyers,Carriers,Para's,Mariens,and ofc Nukes.

My frist target was Issy and then cathy, who was going for culture. I absloutly massacred her cities with tactical nukes and marines. But she decided to vassle to Hannibal, so i was forced to kill off cathy and then proceed to finish hannibal, who had mech units vs my mariens/fighters,and nukes. I had nukes and a ton of fighters so i still won naturally.

After Hannibal capped, i went for the little general, Pretty much did the same thing, seiged his cities with nukes, and finished him off by capturing his capital. He was the next to vassle.

I set everything to automate, and then the UN diplo vote comes up. I was not expecting a win, but i still voted for myself and prepared for my next war target who was Memhed. I got the vote and won the game
Here are the end game stats,
Demographics

Builds

Kills

Top 5 cities.

Thanks for the game, its great to be back, and sorry for taking my time to post this, i've been busy with other forum games as well as college.

 

[BurN]

Deity - 25AD

(I`m late I know )

Spoiler :

Not too confident about playing isolation deity but those gems convinced me.

Tech path: Mining, BW, pottery, mysticism, fishing, writing, sailing, AH, med, priest, monarchy, col, maths, CS, alph, currency.

I was tired while I was playing and this resulted in some stupid mistakes and misplays:
- I settled Nippur way too late, it should have been made with the second settler as it`s just a monster city with all the rivers and the two lakes. Dno what was I thinking.
- I teched alph before currency... ugh, that just doesn`t make any sense. I think I got confused when I was thinking about academy vs bulb phil (and found Toaism). Obviously I opted for the academy as pacifism is not really an option atm with all my happy-warriors. But I forgot to change techs. bleh

Anyway, there have been 4-5 GG`s so there`s some warring going on there. Wonders are going relatively late, so that`s a good sign. Though SH went at 2880BC (T28), which is pretty early.

So.. just finished currency at 25AD. (after alph, ghah! )



Next up is probably calendar/IW and then bulb to lib. Or I could head for optics myself as the AI might be slow if I am to judge tech-speed by wonder dates.

Edit: Dur-kuri is the dedicated gp farm.
Edit2: Never mind the stupid picasa thing from my gf.

 

[Outlandish]

Question about the happiness available:

Spoiler :

I'm not sure I've ever had a true lonely start that had anything other than exactly 2 happiness resources until today. Do these maps get edited in any way beforehand? This one I see has 4 different sources, the map I got today has a continent big enough for 15 somewhat spread out fairly decent quality cities, with not a single happiness of any type.

Are there some rules to this, or just weird luck? I must have played hundreds of lonely starts by now, and I think I remember a couple maps with one resource, but never 0 or 3 or more. Figure this would be the best place to ask!

 

[ecuwins]

Question about the happiness available:

Spoiler :

I'm not sure I've ever had a true lonely start that had anything other than exactly 2 happiness resources until today. Do these maps get edited in any way beforehand? This one I see has 4 different sources, the map I got today has a continent big enough for 15 somewhat spread out fairly decent quality cities, with not a single happiness of any type.

Are there some rules to this, or just weird luck? I must have played hundreds of lonely starts by now, and I think I remember a couple maps with one resource, but never 0 or 3 or more. Figure this would be the best place to ask!

Spoiler :

All of the maps I have done are Fractal modified for balance. Since there is always an Immortal save attached, it makes sense that the map should at least be winnable at that level. Add to that the fact that I'm not an Immortal level player. Maybe I make the maps too nice? All in all it varies, as the fractal script is doing most of the work.

 

[vale]

I haven't played Civ IV in ages so I'm easing back into with this one on noble normal. I've only played through 2040 BC so far so I guess this would be considered a bit beyond checkpoint 1.

Spoiler :

I settled in place while scouting out the island. Tech path was the obvious mining-pottery-bronze working-animal husbandry. Meanwhile I built a worker, warriors and whipped out a granary. The warriors were put into fog-busting and garrison duty and I continued with mysticism as basically every city I'm looking at besides my first settler will need border pops immediately. I decided to go for Stonehenge and I completed it the turn before settling my third city on the lakeside clam spot when I stopped for a break. Both cities are sharing tiles with the capital because in the rush to get Stonehenge out, I have neglected to build a second worker which is keeping many tiles underdeveloped. My full tech path for this round was
mining-pottery-bronze working-animal husbandry-mysticism-priesthood-partial on monarchy. Looking at my screenshots, I think I will correct that monarchy to fishing first as my border pops to grab seafood will come before monarchy+fishing can finish.

In the coming round, I'm hoping to oracle something useful like currency perhaps and start cottage spamming the island while filling in the missing cities. I have a ton of health resources all things considered so once I get HR my cities will be able to improve quickly. I'll need to get lots of workers out quickly but that will be easy enough to do with this particular capital.

Bablyon circa 2040:

The full island:

 

[vale]

Question about the happiness available:

Spoiler :

I've seen some nasty isolated starts but realistically it is health that is going to be a huge pain while isolated. You can always Hereditary Rule your unhappiness away at a minor upkeep cost. If you can avoid hooking up metal and keep your island fogbusted you have super cheap mobile temples for the entire time you are isolated.

 

[krikav]

I uploaded my 1 AD save, Any hinters about what I might to sub-par is appreciated.

I remembered I played a LHC with Hammurabi, so I thought I would try it again now and see how it went.
I was absolutely amazed by the result and wanted to share this.

1AD
2011: 139 BPT @ -36 GPT, 7 Cities (total pop 34), 6 workers, 6 warriors and a chariot, score 518.
To the 2011 saves advantage I also had MC, CoL and about half of CS, I also had 3 forges, I also had alot of forests left.

2018: 226 BPT @ -99 GPT, 14 (!) cities (total pop 74), 10 workers, 10 warriors and a galley, score 804.


I can't remember much of what I thought or did 2011, but this way through my plan was to reach pottery/writing and then aggresively settle the entire island, planning the dotmap to cram in as many cities as possible.

 

[sampsa]

Looks pretty good. Maybe some worker actions could have been improved, roads and mines in NW are less important than cottages in SE-area, which looks a bit neglected. Market in capital is maybe worth it, outside of it no. Capturing the barb city would be huge (trade routes), so getting some swords out asap would be great. Is CoL the correct tech path now? I'd just go towards optics.

 

[sampsa]

1AD

Spoiler :

I went for a more traditional tech path (IMO astro is the thing you should be aiming for asap in isolation). Optics will be in 100AD and 2nd GS to pop astro 350AD. Some poor planning there, could have GS a bit earlier. I don't think cramming in as many cities as possible is better, even with land this good.

 

[Fish Man]

1610AD conquest.

 

[Fish Man]

1AD

Spoiler :

I went for a more traditional tech path (IMO astro is the thing you should be aiming for asap in isolation). Optics will be in 100AD and 2nd GS to pop astro 350AD. Some poor planning there, could have GS a bit earlier. I don't think cramming in as many cities as possible is better, even with land this good.

View attachment 504875

I feel like going currency and CS before astro was the right path here. This is imm so you're not gonna get much from tech trades anyways if you go optics super early. Also, the power of this particular bureau cap can't be overstated. So many cottages, and a gems to boot. In contrast if you want to trade for CS...well you're never gonna get it, given the tech pace and no Mansa. Also you won't win lib (or won't be able to lib anything good) if you delay it by that much.

I went the long game of settling optimally as many cities as possible. By the time artillery rolled around there wasn't any serious resistance.

Why are you making off-river cottages? You're not financial and you have a nice river and plenty of coast so I don't see how not farming/workshopping everything makes sense in this situation.

IMO another main difference was me settling Babylon 1E so I could get the wheat. The power of a 5f(+1c1h) tile for whipping purposes far exceeded what the PH could give, even in the early game.

 

[sampsa]

I feel like going currency and CS before astro was the right path here. This is imm so you're not gonna get much from tech trades anyways if you go optics super early. Also, the power of this particular bureau cap can't be overstated. So many cottages, and a gems to boot. In contrast if you want to trade for CS...well you're never gonna get it, given the tech pace and no Mansa. Also you won't win lib (or won't be able to lib anything good) if you delay it by that much.

Very, very hard for me to believe that currency+CS beat faster astro. Astro just allows so much good for you, earlier resource trades and earlier war. I agree that on imm AI is sometimes very slow, but should easily get alpha, math and currency at least via trade. The last sentence is nonsensical to me. We already agreed that AI techs very slow.

Why are you making off-river cottages? You're not financial and you have a nice river and plenty of coast so I don't see how not farming/workshopping everything makes sense in this situation.

Because there is nothing better to do currently and I think off-river cottages are slightly better than working coast. I am not making farms because I have no CS and no -cap that allows it. In the NW-area farms would probably be better though, thanks for mentioning. I don't think workshops will be of much use this game, just whip or draft an army. Have you forgotten that there are other victory conditions than space? edit: oops, didn't see your saves. Quite late victory though.

I feel like another main difference was me settling Babylon 1E so I could get the wheat. The power of a 5f(+1c1h) tile for whipping purposes far exceeded what the PH could give, even in the early game.

Wow. Sounds like a huge mistake to me.

 

[Fish Man]

Very, very hard for me to believe that currency+CS beat faster astro. Astro just allows so much good for you, earlier resource trades and earlier war. I agree that on imm AI is sometimes very slow, but should easily get alpha, math and currency at least via trade. The last sentence is nonsensical to me. We already agreed that AI techs very slow.

Because there is nothing better to do currently and I think off-river cottages are slightly better than working coast. I am not making farms because I have no CS and no -cap that allows it. In the NW-area farms would probably be better though, thanks for mentioning. I don't think workshops will be of much use this game, just whip or draft an army. Have you forgotten that there are other victory conditions than space? edit: oops, didn't see your saves. Quite late victory though.

Wow. Sounds like a huge mistake to me.

I agree my win was quite late; if I went for cuirs everyone would've fallen at the drop of a hat. But alas, I felt like libbing steel for the first time in who knows how long, so it was a long and bloodier slog instead.

Forgot you had no CS...in that case, yeah, no irrigation. As for the happy cap...I dunno, I guess I still got astro pretty darn fast (500-600AD-ish) considering the huge detour. And seriously... buro is pretty powerful. It pays back for CS in not a really long time. If CS costs 1000 beakers and buro gives you an extra 33/turn, then IGNORING the production benefits, it pays back in 30 turns. Pretty good, I'd say. This is not even considering it opens up the lib path, which considering imm and the great start is entirely possible to get along with astro - you can have your cake and eat it too. Currency also slashes your expenses by half, effectively, and slaps +10 to your base commerce.

I don't remember that well but I think most of the AIs didn't even have currency when I met them, and I delayed optics by quite a lot. Massive disappointment to say the least, and even a more compelling argument for teching that stuff first.

Still, I agree with the theory behind your post at least. On most iso maps imm+ it's straight to astro. This start was so good that I was tempted to simcity a bit, though. This led to a later win date but my empire and army was in a prettier shape afterwards. Sometimes you just gotta finish with style.

Which decision was the mistake - yours or mine?