MH's Strange Settings Series 2 - Settlers of the Future!

[WelshGandalf]

I was wondering what happened to this game. Do let us know how it turns out. Could you become the first person ever on the S&R forum to lose a game at Settler difficulty?

Other ideas for silly settings...
- 3 city challenge... like the OCC but you're allowed 3, but obviously only 2 national wonders in each. You could make it the 3 city culture challenge perhaps, where you have to win by culture.
- No worker build challenge... you're not allowed to build workers the *entire* game - you have to steal them or capture already-improved land. Worker micro-management will come to the fore.
- No siege challenge (or city revolt, or city bombard) bit of a weaker idea this one.

 

[Mikehendi]

Second try to post an update... hopefully this time it will actually be posted!

@Welsh

I played until 500 AD, 3 city culture challenges are fun to play, but they have been done a lot already.

I like the idea of a no-workers type of game. There already has been a SG with no tile improvements, a really fun read --> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270990

I might try something similar in the future though. For now I'd like to come up with games that feature stuff that hasn't been done before (as far as I know of). Which isn't too easy, since Civ IV is already a couple of years old.


I played until 500 AD:

More AI's start completing apollo

And Mansa builds his first part:

He completed Apollo some 300 years ago, this might mean trouble!

The known world at 10AD

And techs (I'm mostly focussing on techs that improve tile values like chemistry, biology)

Oxford is completed in the capital

Even though it's not a commerce city, it still outperforms the other cities by a wide margin.

Fast forward to 500AD: I discovered a huge unsettler area. It won't be that way for long. I should have bought maps from the AI's. For a one-time investment you can buy a map, and get timely updates for only 5 gold (once you know all tiles, Ais will sell you maps for 5 gold, revealing any updated city/cultural borders etc. since the last time).

Hatty is leading the space race. She's already completed 4/16 parts!

Demographics

That sort of extreme leading/trailing between the catagories you don't see often in standard games

I need to start focussing on a few good production cities so I can quickly build spaceship parts when I enable them.

These are my builds so far:

Underworkerd myself a bit. I blame it on teching too fast which keeps enabling those must-haves

Mansa completes 2 parts on the same turn!

And I finally bought maps. from all AI's. This reveals all current cities.

There's some unsettled islands left:

and I'm settling all the somewhat decent land I can get.

Civics

Hatty has 6 out of 16 parts already!

Yes it's only casings and thrusters, but remember they have ALL techs already!


It starts to look like I'm indeed going to be the first guy to lose a settler-level game on these forums

By the way, the starting save is up in the OP, in case anyone missed it

 

[Bugio]

I understand HR helps against emancipation unhappyness, but you should really go for rep asap. It would boost research a LOT especially now that you built oxford.
Also, astronomy for observatories, and then go for superconductors.

 

[coanda]

Fission + Rocketry = you win. No Fission or Rocketry, you lose.

Alternatively, you're actually fairly close to Mass Media; if your diplo. situation is good (I don't know), you might manage a diplo. victory.

 

[strijder20]

Infantries + artilleries will do fine too if you get enough of them, and we are playing on settler.

 

[Mikehendi]

UN would be a certain win... There's a hidden +something (+2? +3?) attitude modifier , making a lot of AI's pleased upon meeting them. Everyone now is pleased, a few are friendly, and I haven't even been trying to be liked much.

Warring would probably be doable also, as long as I'm not dogpiled upon declaring.

But I really really want to try to beat their spaceships. Preferably peaceful. I have kind of set them up to win through space, so I guess that's why I want to win that way. (Like if I'd set the map up with each AI having 3 45000-culture cities (normal speed) I would have wanted to win culture.

And warring on settler AI's just feels... wrong somehow
I wouldn't be proud of myself

 

[coanda]

If Hatty keeps putting hammers into SS at the exact same rate she has been, she launches in about 120 turns. Realistically, that's ridiculous - she's getting more cities, her cities are growing, and her infrastructure is being developed. I'd expect somewhere between 40 and 80 turns for her to launch. It's remotely possible you'll manage to launch before that, but I wouldn't count on it.

So it's time to start planning some sort of dirty trick unless you want to choose defeat before dishonor.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Can you bribe the AIs to war? Not with techs, but with gold? They're all different religions, so they should hate one another.

 

[strijder20]

Oh, I was trying the save, and was about to war, but you have a point, MH. Warring is too easy, considering that their SoD is probably 4 units.
And bribing is possible, but I have no clue how much gold is needed.
Little hint: Tech constitution and switch to Repr. It gives you a 250 beaker boost.

 

[Mikehendi]

Whoops, I thought I could skip Nationalism and Constitution, but they appear to be prereqs for some space tech! (found out when shift-clicking all space techs in the research screen).

In that case I'll tech them right away! I don't think it will be as big as 250 beakers, I'm running only ~12 specialists ATM, with estimated average 150% science multiplier, so that's about 100 beakers. This will increase over time of course.

The problem with bribing AI's into war is 1. All that gold could have been converted to lots of beakers (1 gold ~ 2 beakers), and 2. If the attacked AI behave normal, it will just keep doing whatever it was doing when it was peace (like completing wonders in to be captured cities and stuff ), and 3. The attacker might show up with only 3 units, or worse, not at all!

I'd love to have a dirty trick ready, but I can't think of one which won't affect my economy too much (spying is too costly probably, bribing wars see above).

Will it suffice to draft and whip an army to destroy an AI's capital when they've launched? (starting the army-build some turns before the AI launches)

If that works, it won't affect my builder game untill I'm SURE I cant beat their spaceship.

 

[NoSuchName]

It's probably not tight enough that you have to draft/whip an army. I played the same concept on a different map/leader, so I'm not sure that it's relevant here. Rifles and Cannons, while a possibility, will take huge casualties when taking a capital. That battle was very apparent in my power graph after the game!

Much better to wait with the war until Bombers come online instead. With the comparatively long delay between rifles and bombers, there's plenty time to slowbuild them. It's not as if you have very much else to build by that point anyway, this being Settler and all. That way, casualties were minimal (unlucky dice rolls, mainly) and the AI didn't have that much more of an army. They never built the air defense to counter it - but I think Louis used a Mobile SAM as a makeshift scout.

When playing, I choose instead Mansa Musa, as SPI seemed very useful by letting me accept all demands for changing religion/civics with no penalty. That successfully kept all AIs at pleased or better which was a nice security measure.

 

[Mikehendi]

I hope I'll have stronger units to draft then Rifles at the moment an AI is close to launch! Sure 2pop drafting infantry or better isn't as efficient as rifles, but who cares about neat efficiency when you're about to lose the game!

And when I'm not building useful buildings, I prefer building wealth (and research if nessecary) instead of units for now. I think a peaceful spaceship is possible from the starting save. With my game, I don't know, I messed up a lot so far

 

[Mikehendi]

It's 1000 AD now, and I'm in the middle of my first Golden Age (Taj Mahal)

I've kept expanding, here's an overview of my empire:

The 6 ol' core cities, the homelands

Fully grown and fully improved land. Nice and strong

The 4 youngsters:

They're still building up the basic production city infrastructure, while being workshopped. There's more room, but it's crappy land without food resources.

The Paradise Islands

They're only just settled, but are already contributing to the empire through trade routes (about 60-80 beakers)


I got lots of messages of AI's completing spaceship parts, but Hatty seems to have fallen asleep:

Still 6 parts, still leading the race. Probably by a very narrow margin, now.

I'm starting to think a peaceful ship is possible...

So, how long is the road we have to travel?

20 techs to go. This is purely the space techs, so no military intervention techs are included here.

Finally, a list of our cities

London, despite being totally workshopped, still has the 2nd highest base commerce of all cities! This is before it is multiplied by Bureau. So London'd oxford university isn't that misplaced after all. I'm surprised.

BTW I just love the added specialists and garrison colums!


My strategy has been to alternate cities between building wealth and infra, always making sure the science slider stays at 100% ATM, research is the bottleneck. In the end it will probably be production, though I'm not sure.

I was thinking of going
- railroads first to improve tile yields
- laboratories (superconductors)
- locate aluminium (industrialism)
- apollo (rocketry)
- the expensive engines (Fusion)
- genetics, composites and ecology last

Fusion requires a lot of prereqs though, so I might change when I run out of stuff to build.

Any suggestions for the late game tech order?

 

[RedKi-rr]

Do you consider sabotaging with spies their SS parts?

 

[Mikehendi]

Do you consider sabotaging with spies their SS parts?

I'm not planning on that:

Currently i generate 4 EP/turn. Sabotaging a single project costs 11000+ EP according to the spy screen.

I would need to make a serious investment: spy buildings/specialists/EP slider to get enough EP for that, at the cost of a lot of setting my own space date back a lot.

And when I sabotage 1 AI, there are still 5 other spaceships being constructed.

 

[iggymnrr]

Any suggestions for the late game tech order?

Railroad for tile yields won't mean much. I generally avoid it unless using a corp. Usually (on settler) I drive to labs 1st before Apollo and aluminum. Ending will play itself. OTOH sometimes I go "over the top" like plastics and maybe radio before Apollo. Path ends up being something like satellites->composites->labs etc. Depends on how much tech a person can pull down.

 

[Mikehendi]

A close finish...

We start of at 1000AD, with 20 techs to go

We went for railroad first, not only for the extra hammer on mines, but also so we can move fast should it come to war. When the BFC's have been improved, all workers start auto-build-trade-network

Next we went for laboratories, so we could get the neccesary infra in place. Most cities got factories, coal plants, observatories and laboratories.

This was followed by teching towards rocketry for the apollo project.

1200AD, we have finished teching rocketry

And Hatty has woken up again, starting to complete more parts.

We still have to build Apollo, tech these 13 techs AND build all the parts. Can we beat her?

Industrialism is our next goal, revealing aluminium. Our Ironworks city builds research instead of starting on Apollo, to shave a turn off research (and hopefully, build apollo with the aluminium bonus)

Luckily, we settled those islands, because our only source of aluminium is here:

Mined and well!

So, the IW city starts Apollo:

Note how it is automated with commerce focus

Just when I tought I'd easily make it, hatty

completes 2 parts in 1 turn!

1285AD, Apollo completes. The situation:

Hatty is currently building the 2nd engine, and the docking bay. I plan on only 1 engine, so we have to beat her by 6 turns or so.

By the time we finish our first part, hatty has started on the life support

1345 AD: Hatty completes the 2nd engine, and things start to look dire

Only 4 parts to go for her, and she has 2 of them in production already!

We are still 6 techs and 14 parts away!

To make things worse, we pop a scientist at low odds, so I can't start a Golden Age (I had 1 scientist saved).

Since York has 95% scientist odds, I bulb 6000 beakers off computers and fiber optics. But this really sucks, I needed the production, not the beakers!

To make it EVEN WORSE, Hatty DOES launch a final golden age!

1400 AD:

with 1 part to go, 1 in production!!! Next turn, she'd start on the last part as well.

So, I'm not going to make it...

And...

Hatty launches 1445 AD!

Note how CLOSE her capital is to my empire

IIRC, I have 12 turns for a 2-engine ship! I hope I recall correct!

I first spend almost half that time, 5 whole turns, to tech democracy, and switch to

Which gives 3 turns of revolution!!!

I go 100% gold, buy a few modern armours, and draft infantry ruthlessly in nearby cities. 1490, I DOW. I think there's 2 or 3 turns left.

Here's my army after I dowed (and she had a DP with charles)

Infantry (need another turn to move closer, unfortunately...)

and 6 modern armour

There's 2 spies in the city (2 or 3 got caught). 1 fortiefied, 1 arrived this turn!

The revolt succeeds!

Not great odds for this armour:

But he wins! Lucky me. The other 2 defenders fell easily

And I razed it! Hatty's mission has failed!

My capital was defended by 1 machine gun for a very short wile, but nothing happened to it.

Next in the space race is Mansa:

But We'll complete our own ship next turn!

Effect of the draft and war on my cities

and in 1500 AD

We launch!

Now just hope that no one launches within 6 turn with a double engine ship...

While we defend our capital with our out-of-the-blue army

And while hatty has teched only 2,5 techs for the entire game

We win!

Sorry for the report has been written a bit hastily, gotta go now! Will reflect later!

 

[elohssa]

Fun read. You would of had to rush everybody if you didn't pop that aluminum on the island.

 

[yatta77]

Nice series! Very creative!
I wish you the necessary free time and the necessary patience to keep it up in future.

Cheers! Best wishes!
- yatta, post #987