Lonely Hearts Club, BTS Edition, Chapter VII: Darius

[pawelo]

Back to the LHC, reporting a Monarch Cultured win in 1946 AD

Checkpoint finish

Spoiler :

Very pleasant eco/culture game.
I haven't fought a single war

At first, following a CS slingshot spotted in some brillant games , I went for Theology and Philosophy using my uber-Research.

My first idea was to win by space - this cottage-powered land was just crying for it, still I backed-up with culture. I never explored the seas, waiting until early 1700AD to cheer some foreign culture (I think it was the Khmer).

As usual, I got the Rifles and managed to get a strong coastal defense.
At first, I went seeing the power of Shaka. Luckily, he managed to stay far behind anyone else tech-wise, and was beating the hell out of Hammy, the main power aside Shaka.

I kept my strong tech lead, developping some nice production cities foreseeing the space.

In 1800 AD, estimating it would be a nice thing to have a backup plan, I spreaded all three religions to my nine cities (perfect study case - reviewing a little bit the mecanism for the MLG ) and built all temples. Then I beelined for Electricity / Radio / Mass Media, grabbing the three culutre wonders plus Eiffel. By the way, earlier I grabbed the Sankore / AP wonders, losing Sistine by 3 turns , the Taj and the SoL too.

When Rocketry kicked in around 1860 AD, I was more than happy to have a backup plan - with no Aluminium, it was a lost cause. So I set up all cathedrals right and start pushing the culture, even though I managed to finish some parts of the SS (even in my monster prod cities it was taking ages).

I think the three legendaries were timed well :



Here is the world a turn before I won by culture :



Score-wise, nothing great - 15K - still it was a pure fun managing the early ages abd seeing to all this island flowerish

Looking forward for a LHC VIII Toku

 

[r_rolo1]

Good one pawelo... two things:

1-I'm flattered that you said my ( and InvisibleStalke ) game was brilliant in start, but I/ve the feeling that I blew my good start with a wild goose chase of a SS win. IMHO I should had pursued a military path atleast until capturing the smaller outside continent ( like InvisibleStalke did )... oh well, live and learn

2- You're not isolated in MLG4

3- Check the bullpen. Next two leaders are chosen ( and VIII is not Toku )

 

[pawelo]

Good one pawelo... two things:

1-I'm flattered that you said my ( and InvisibleStalke ) game was brilliant in start, but I/ve the feeling that I blew my good start with a wild goose chase of a SS win. IMHO I should had pursued a military path atleast until capturing the smaller outside continent ( like InvisibleStalke did )... oh well, live and learn

2- You're not isolated in MLG4

3- Check the bullpen. Next two leaders are chosen ( and VIII is not Toku )

1. It was, don't be too shy

2. You can become

3. Well, it will be for the next time Lonely Toku petition!

 

[r_rolo1]

^^Read the bullpen... Toku is already there for 8/12/07

 

[InvisibleStalke]

@InvisibleStalke

Good to see that your game is running smoothly. Earlier punch pwns late big punch most of the times.....

I've ended up in a late game war to the death with the other military superpower.

Spoiler :

In my game its Hannurabi who is strong - very much so as you will see below. I took out Peter fairly easily and vassalized him and then turned my attention to Elizabeth. My destroyers had to wipe out around 30 frigates but she capitulated after I took her capital.

I had flight and radio. He had plastics and artillery. Both had industrialism. My attack army was around 40 mixed infantry, paratroopers plus a handful of cannon, machine guns and tanks.

He had around 70 units in his attack stack - 26 cavalry, 20 odd marines with 4 promotions each, rest infantry and artillery. Plus 5-8 infantry stockpiled in every city.

I let him come for me - there was a nice choke point between my vassal and my enemy. After lots of bombing and heavy casualties on both sides I have destroyed his attack stacks and started advancing into his cities. Meanwhile I am building the Manhattan project and have built the UN. I am stockpiling cash. If resistance continues beyond another six turns, I am going to rushbuy 10-15 nukes and turn him and his vassal into a nice green radioactive glow.

Hopefully doing this should diminish his popularity sufficiently for me to be voted world leader. I'm pretty sure the war is won - I have captured only one city so far but his war weariness must be immense.

 

[illram]

I'm pretty sure the war is won - I have captured only one city so far but his war weariness must be immense.

Haven't looked at the XML files but I'm fairly certain that AI war weariness at emperor is negligible. Definitely an order of magnitude below the human's calculations for war weariness.

(On a related note that's why I think the SoZ is so useless, other than to keep it from affecting you.)

 

[r_rolo1]

^^I tend to agree.... I'm playing a SG in Monarch where I was attacked by waves of chinese Grens and cuirasseers ( the guy should be : I had infantry and cannons ) and had the SoZ. I was needed to kill +40 chinese units to see the WW effects in the enemy pop.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Devastation win on Emperor in 1903 - 59k points.

What's a devastation win - well I can hardly call it diplomatic when I won by destroying one AI, vassalizing two and nuking the other three so far back into the stone age that their populations were at least halved.

After launching 20 nukes, razing coastal cities, running a police state economy (war weariness was unmanagable at the end - even on 60% culture) and past extreme use of slavery, Lonely Darius's war crimes will go down as my worst ever.

Illram/RRolo - You may be right on WW - despite my razing two cities, capturing two (including capital) and nuking around 10 cities of my main opponent he still refused to capitulate. I did get the sense that the AI population levels had dropped a little during the war, but I don't know if that was due to WW or other actions like drafting/whipping, or just the loss of trade resources from me. Probably the loss of trade resources.

The AI tech rate did seem to slow massively during the war - during the whole time I got rocketry, fission and built the Manhattan project the AI only got one tech. Possibly all the cash was put into rushing.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Late game

Rather boring turns. After I got Rocketry I have converted several cities for production centers with workshops replacing towns. Civic changes were in order too:

Women Suffrage, Free speech, Caste system, State property and Organized religion.
[/SPOILER]

StuntedAzrael - good win - I am curious about your late game choices though. Normally I am paranoid and overprotective about my towns until the very last minute. In a space race situation I probably would have gone with:

- Universal sufferage, Bureaucracy, Emancipation, Free Market and Free Religion.

Possible bureaucracy would swap with free speech if my capital wasn't strong in production. In this game I built both ironworks and oxford in the capital. It had a lot of towns, but with one hammer from US and one from the levee plus settled great people it was pretty strong production wise so I ran bureaucracy rather than free speech.

Workshops can give massive production - did you burn many towns for them though? And if you did where did you make up the research from?

1926 is a pretty healthy time for a spaceship win, esp as it seems you didn't take much land beyond your starting continent.

 

[StuntedAzrael]

StuntedAzrael - good win - I am curious about your late game choices though. Normally I am paranoid and overprotective about my towns until the very last minute. In a space race situation I probably would have gone with:

- Universal sufferage, Bureaucracy, Emancipation, Free Market and Free Religion.

Possible bureaucracy would swap with free speech if my capital wasn't strong in production. In this game I built both ironworks and oxford in the capital. It had a lot of towns, but with one hammer from US and one from the levee plus settled great people it was pretty strong production wise so I ran bureaucracy rather than free speech.

Workshops can give massive production - did you burn many towns for them though? And if you did where did you make up the research from?

1926 is a pretty healthy time for a spaceship win, esp as it seems you didn't take much land beyond your starting continent.

You can check the save. I left 4 cities with towns standing. Two of them were mediocre and two of them were monsters (including capital). Capital had levee, National park, factory, hydroplant, industrial part & laboratory which made him a very powerful space ship factory. All other cities went thru transformation. I made transformations just before I was ready to build thrusters and casings. After that there is only few tech so research is not a priority.

Caste system is a pretty safe bet since all my cottages matured and I was floating in happiness so I could easily take +5 negatives on it. State religion is also a safe bet since I only sacrifice 1 trade route ( had no corporations ).

I'm actually not sure about organized religion. Does it give +25% for space ship parts?

 

[shyuhe]

WW will accumulate on monarch and emperor AI but you have to fight intelligently. You have to inflict losses on tiles that they do not have cultural dominance in for it to count as foreign losses. If they lose units in their own territory, WW is negligible (as it is for you in that situation). I've pushed WW against monarch AI with SoZ into the 30's. It shrank their cities to size 1-2 You just have to pick your battle locations well (I killed his attack stacks in my territory for about half the game).

 

[InvisibleStalke]

WW will accumulate on monarch and emperor AI but you have to fight intelligently. You have to inflict losses on tiles that they do not have cultural dominance in for it to count as foreign losses. If they lose units in their own territory, WW is negligible (as it is for you in that situation). I've pushed WW against monarch AI with SoZ into the 30's. It shrank their cities to size 1-2 You just have to pick your battle locations well (I killed his attack stacks in my territory for about half the game).

In that game I killed around 70 of his units in my vassals territory. I'm not sure who had SOZ at that point. How do you tell what their war weariness level is?

 

[illram]

In that game I killed around 70 of his units in my vassals territory. I'm not sure who had SOZ at that point. How do you tell what their war weariness level is?

Enough spy points to Investigate city, AFAIK.