MrB2-rewriting history....again

[Mr. Blonde]

Good to hear you are alive, Belisar

I also had problems with crashes after installing the patch. The solution imo was to reduce the screen resolution to 1024x768. I am eagerly waiting for the turnlog
Thursday batt will be able to play afaik. I am not sure about Fr evening or Sat before noon I may need some time to purchase Xmas presents this weekend. Prepare yourself for next Mon or Tue for the next round.
Replaceable parts are important, a free great merchant is in if we are first for corporation, I don´t know yet what path the AIs will take, Mansa Musa is aure a candidate to grab it.
Infrastructure wise we should have now some free space to build up some military (a must, imo)

 

[Belisar]

Was a bit complex, this time, additional I had limited opport. for playing, but here is my log:
If batter plays next day, I could probably make a few turns on saturday morning, and
MrB next (Sunday?), but take all the time you need. Good turns are better then quick turns

Preturn:
First, a bit MM: Cuzco works an unimproved tile, fix it (additional, send 3 workers
back into the core to improve Cuzco, and, later, Machu and Ollantay)
Machu and Tiwanaku set to more growth, the sugar near the fish/clam city isn't worked, fixed.
Uuuaaahh, someone forgot to build the 6th university for Oxford, after the current project
I max the fish-city for production, start uni, it will take 16 turns before we can start
Oxford


Next, the tech situation: I thought this over for some time, in the end I
traded for astronomy with Peter. Colossus is lost, but the foreign trade routes are
worth more, I checked it, science and cash-flow is now +7%, Nationalism was out already,
so we get at least an important tech for it.
Then Civil Service for Banking with the Malinese, science set to Economics in 3 turns.
Wait with revolution (representation) for Free Market and Emancipation.
The added benefit for having astronomy is beeing able to trade ressources and seeing what
the AI has (Peter for instance has no iron )
This will give us the option to trade lux/health with the weaker AIs to grow our cities even more.
We are still up the important Paper/PrintingPress tech-path, so we should get Democracy first
even after Economics.
I trade with Peter, we need more health ressources, pig and deer for cows and sugar.

Astronomy allows me to start observatories in the core, Ollantay starts production of knights,
Machu should also be set to military after the current project.

I settle our last city on our continent and continue jungle clearing. Our new southern
cities are maxed for growth, keep an eye on them, the default governeur is way to shield-greedy.
The workers in Cuzco clear the rest of the forest as we have enough health, we need more towns.

We were first to economics, got a free great merchant, need to send him on a mission.
Democracy is next.

The future:
Military: I started knights, 2 of our cities should build them, maybe Ollantay and Machu,
upgrade to cav.

Civics: Democracy is in 6 turns, then we could revolt to representation/free market/emancipation.
IMO, Suffrage should wait until we have enough towns to get the extra shield, but open to discussion.

Tech: We are in front the important paper/printing-press tech-path, next I would probably
go for coporation (additional trade path would bring in a lot of additional science/cash)
and then the steel-path that brings in rails.

MM: Don't forget the core, some cities need more food and now that we will get Democracy soon,
towns are a high priority.

Trading: Avoid giving the Malinese ressources, health should be ok now, if we need lux
(representation should take care of it), trade with the weak AIs.
The one thing we should get after democracy is copper for the statue-of-liberty.

Good luck batter
Belisar

 

[batteryacid]

good to hear from your turns. What to do with the great merchant? Is the trade route the best choice ? does anyone know the calculator for the cash it is giving?

waah unworked core tiles- I guess it happened when the city grew - could be that it happened the last turn before uploading the save- I tend myself to forget to MM Cities in the turn I know someone else is continuing to play, I know I´m lazy - but this way you can thirsten your addiction for perfecting the MM , Belisar

Other questions: How is our great wonder strategy developing ? Are we building the Statue of Libert? Or are we still some techs away?

I heard that the AI tends to be more aggressive with 1.09- is our Military still composed of axemen and worriors? are we strong enough to survive a 4-6 unit sneak attack from the AI ?

I will try to play today evening - I keep you informed about my turns; when anything unusual happens I will report and play remaining turns (we are now in a ~10 turn rotation ? ) tomorrow morning

 

[Belisar]

Democracy is due in 6, so the statue can be started soon enough. Try getting copper, it´s a 1500 shield toy.
Oxford in Cuzco is the main priority.

Military: i started knights in Ollantay, Machu should join after an observatory.

 

[batteryacid]

As promised here is the log of my turns

So far nothing unusual happened.
The most important things:

We now have DEMOCRACY (I switched to free market and Emancipation after finishing the Taj Mahal), Next was Replacable Parts (strengthened our Windmill/Watermill tiles, Begin to build lumbermills in the core) then corporation,

Oxford University is started in Cuzco, Statue of Liberty in the City North of it

I traded after ~5 turns copper with mansa which reduces the statue of Liberty costs from 54 to 29 turns - I think this is worth it, since we want to build wall street also in this city (As he begins to fall rather fast back concerning victory points I see no danger doing so; he gets one happyness resource, I forgot which one)

Great people: we get another great merchant in Cuzco, we produce one great artist in our North-Eastern Coast City

Our 3 Southern cities develope really great, they really have the potential for powerhouses

Up to decide:
-should we build the forbidden palace? It will give us i guess 6-10 gpt, we now make +9 at 90% science I don´t think it is a must

-where to build the wall street, we still need 2 banks for it; city is to decide since we have some potent candidates, one of it building now the statue of Liberty)

-Tech:We will want Biology, but for this we still need engineering (1turn) Gunpowder (2 turns) Chemistry (4turns), Biology will cost us 5 turns (will be 4 I guess with more commerce coming) so- if able trade those techs and if what will we give ?

save

 

[Belisar]

Yea, those southern cities will be really good sites, shows once more the power of a worker-horde improving the land quickly. There was a mess of jungle, now there are some fine cities

The tech situation: If the techs we want are very cheap (1,2 turns)
don't give away one of our monopols, we can afford to research those by
ourself. Exception: if we get multiple techs out of a deal.

To MrB: Sunday or should I fit in 5 turns before?

Belisar

 

[Mr. Blonde]

I will definitely have time tomorrow, but I have nothing against the pace speeding up as the next SG variant is waiting.

The course is set in stone for the next turns: Go to Chemistry and send the two great merchants on their mission. We need big and far away cities for them, so Map trading with the US and France may be helpful, I think their terretories are on the opposite side of the globe. I think we need Open borders for the merchants to enter foreign terretories, so map trading, deciding for a city and open border deals will have to be negotiated. We ignore Tech Trading for now. Where to build the FP is to decide.
Banks + Wall street, some knights in between, maybe some longbows for defense. We will need 5-6 galleons for our invasion.
After chemistry: Biology first or Steel-->Rails? Imo biology -> more specialists / city growth should come first, it´s just 4-5 turns difference anyhow.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

As Belisar did not post in the meantime I start playing now.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

I played, here is my turnlog:

1565: Engineering ->Gunpowder
trade worldmaps with MM, Peter and Roosevelt, choose Washington for trademission
1570: nothing remarkable happens
1575: gunpowder->chemistry
1580: Oxford Uni in
1585: Chemistry -> Biology
1590: Knight in Cuzo
1595: Knight in Cuzo
1600: Trade mission gives us 1700 gold. I keep 90% science with + 20 Gold per turn for now, we need the money fro upgrading
1605: Biology is in. I MM the cities, the 6th Bank is in next turn
The next player has to decide where to build the FP and Wall street (Wall street on one of the westcoast cities, Statue of Liberty still needs 20 or so turns), FP maybe in our most southern city? Happiness will be our next immediate problem (I couldn´t prevent Cuzo from growing, I set collosseum to build), trading would make sense (Alex has for instance lots of Ivory)
We are techwise in front concerning Liberalism, Chemistry and RP, back Music, Drama and Divine right with Mansa Musa and Peter. Concerning the city locations I expect Roosevelt ahs excellent ones, I think he will keep up soon, MM and Peters land is imo mediocre.
Research: Steel, Combustion or Rifling make sense, I would guess Rails and then Military Tradition as we don´t have enough units yet for an invasion is the best choice.

Belisar is up

Save

Mali
Russia
US
Greece
France
Japan

 

[Belisar]

Checked the forum saturday too soon, so missed the post.
I got it and hopefully I have time tomorrow.
Looks like we are ahead the important things.
Rails are my priority for now.
Great to hear that the merchant paid off.

Belisar

 

[batteryacid]

Hi Guys
Yesterday I was able to play halve of my turns- and something happened that needs a bit troubleshooting:
Heres the log so far:

Preturn: checking cities- everything looks fine - we are a bit short of happynesss in some cities- so I decide to spread christianity a bit and begin to build Missionaries (not that bad with 2 turns / miss. and 3-4 monks that are needed).

Summary of the turns: Tile improvement: I begin to road all mines as Railroads are only 8 turns away

Cities: most finish happyness/research/Cash I throw in cannons and grenadiers and knights as possible (we now have 2 gren, and 1 cannon ; some knights are also added;in one of the eastern coast cities I decide to build a drydock and to push naval units a bit as we need them anyhow; I would be more happy with the western coast city to push our navy ; but since it s heavily short on production this is no option; we will have to cruise around our continent to begin our invasion as the Greeks and the French are the best invasion options : We can grab Ivory and corn from the Greeks or dyes and Bananas respectively dyes and gems from the french (we can´t grab all three with one city I fear)

Tech: we are now 1 turn away from steam; RR will take another 4 turns; that means we are 5 away to build some Machine gunners and be able to relax a bit concerning bad guys

So here is the trouble: Napoleon is 2 turns away from our coast !
He has roughly 3 catapults , 2 Longbowmen and 9 cavs ready in frigates - this doesn´t look too nice if he decides to go for us; we will have to upgrade all units and perehaps accelerate research to get to the MachineGunners asap; I hope we have enough cash to make both. our navy is a bit small with 3 ships and 2 of them on the wrong side of pur continent; with steam we will have to build ironclads in the city with the drydock (the name slipped from my mind, but I switched it for a 3 turn grocer intermezzo for health reasons)

So, Belisar here`s the save - good luck with your turns; I will take the game today if you finished yours and finish my 10 turns

 

[batteryacid]

@belisar:

I know you are in a kind of stress- but could you please post next time when you announce to play and have no time ? I could have played some more turns yesterday if I had known that you no time to troubleshoot the Napoleon issue

I will finish my turns on Tuesday evening if I don´t get any lifesigns from you- we must accelerate the pace and improve our communication if we want to play variants in the next SGs

 

[batteryacid]

AI IS CHEATING

What the Hell is this?

I played 2 more turns. First of all I see 8 Cavs 4 grenadiers and 3 catapults approaching- no war is declared from napoleon yet. I begin to trade replacable parts with other AIs to get to military tradition and to upgrade our 6 knights and what´s this ?
NOBODY HAS MILITARY TRADITION; NOT EVEN NAPOLEON!!! HOW THE HELL CAN HE HAVE CAVS ???

I give him 20 gpt and 1 lux, but he declares war one turn later

I try everything, change civics to be able to draft and to cash rush I block the coast with cavs and one Pike , but we loose

I cash rush one cannon and draft one Musket in the coastal city, I attack his SOD with all our knights - AND I CANT`S EVEN SCRATCH THEM! With 11:14 strenght I was expecting to loose, but without result?

We loose the city, the Pike and the Musket (even with upgrade against gunpowder units) are gone, he has lost NOTHING

DAMN we are only 3 turns away from railroads and machine gunners

I play two turns further, and now, what a miracle, Napoleon has Military tradition !- approximately (calculating shipping time, upgrades etc. 5 turns LATER than he could have got his cav

So : I ask:

Does it make sense to play further ? Shell I replay my turns and go for MilTrad. ? I mean, this action from Napoleon can only be a joke - a bad dream dreamt by some nasty bits of code

 

[Belisar]

We may have discovered another bug, this time the "tech-bug".
Currently, I`m running some tests to check this, but I`m also in Innsbruck
at the moment so takes some time.
MrB should probably check this too, so we get two independet results.
I will only play any further (from batter`s first save) IF the rules are the
same for any player, including the AI.

 

[batteryacid]

Hi Belisar

I started a thread about this in the Strategy forum- there were other complaints about AI wonder cheating- it´s just nasty- I mean we would have a chance if someone would have Mil.Trad. because then Napoleon would face cavs when he tries a naval attack, which would him cost some of his units, then perehaps we would be able to delay him long enough to come to our machinge gunners and throw him out of our island- but so it´s not fair- he looses nothing, and he can take 4 cities and probably reinforce his forces to destroy us once and for all- I mean we would have played the last 10 turns differently if the danger of facing cavs would have been there

The other thing that comes to my mind: all AIs are really backward concerning InfraStruct. and Money techs- I mean Napoleon must have prepared this sneak attack VERY long since his cities are not that overpowered concerning production

So the decision remains: do we replay the last 15 turns keepind in Mind that Nap. gets "units ex macchina" help ? or do we try to throw him out (rather 50/50 chance with a huge setback for us and our really polished cities)

 

[Mr. Blonde]

I can also play batt´s turns again, maybe tomorrow evening or sat afternoon. The question is: is it a bug or some script initiated to pose a "challenge" for us because we are in front and alone on an island. I was present and had a look at the last save (after 5 of batt´s turns) and the issue is the way as described. I will load before batt´s turns and have a look where and how this stack appears in the worldbuilder. If it is obviously scripted or bugged we will report it.

Something similar happened to me once with barbarians. An axemen came and wiped out a city with 2 archers (40% def. bonus). I replayed the last 2-3 turns, tried half a dozen different moves (letting both archers be attacked in a wood square, attacking the axe on a tile without def. bonus, ect.) and every time the axe could wipe out 2 archers and my city. This also smelled like a script to me.

 

[Quantum7]

Something similar happened to me once with barbarians. An axemen came and wiped out a city with 2 archers (40% def. bonus). I replayed the last 2-3 turns, tried half a dozen different moves (letting both archers be attacked in a wood square, attacking the axe on a tile without def. bonus, ect.) and every time the axe could wipe out 2 archers and my city. This also smelled like a script to me.

This should be the 'random seed' working as intended. It is to prevent people from reloading and trying again when confronted with bad luck.

(note: if you take different actions in previous turns, you can still influence the random seed. If i.e. you'd have attacked the axeman with both of your archers one turn earlier you may have gotten different results)

 

[Mr. Blonde]

I´m not talking about replaying the same turn, the save I loaded was 2 turns before the axeman made it into combat. I´m sure the random seed is made for only 1 turn at the beginning and not for all possible fights some turns in the future. I am very aware that the random seeds for 1 turn exists and this is good so.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

I replayed batt´s turns and it seems the AI was playing correctly, the not being able to trade the tech tree up issue which got us into trouble is something to be aware of next time, though (and it is not mentioned in the handbook). However, the question stands: what do we do now? Batt´s save before the invasion is still there, but we get our ass whooped.

My personal opinion: now that we know the issue we start another game with warfare included. Replaying is imo a kind of cheating, on the other hand we would have had a decent chance if we could trade for MT and upgrade our knights. Well, you always learn something new

Planning for "MrB2: now it´s personal"
Difficulty: Monarch or Prince
Pangea
Standard size/ random climate/levels
Epic speed
Variant: Aggressive civs on pangea, maybe aggressive AI on , rampaging barbarians. All victory conditions on but we have to win via conquest
Civ: Greeks (I want to try the GP milling and cultural bombs can be useful)

AIs: Mongols, Incas, Napoleon, Japan as other aggressive civs, Isabella, Cesar and Otto for their humble personality .

I say we leave the oscillating war variant for now as the war weariness seems to be a tad imba (imo Theocracy should lower WW and Police state increase experience)

Opinions?

 

[batteryacid]

Hard to say- we have three options:
1)play with the lst savegame- we loose one city, have some nasty turns in Front of us, but according to one player which postet in my strategy.thread we will be able to throw him out with a lot of losses, with the bonus of Alexander and Teddy ganging up- we should bot have a lot of troubles with them since we will then have infantry and machine gunners
2) we play with the savegame 5 turns earlier: we loose nothing, but it smells like cheating- we will have an easy space race victory in this case I guess
3) we play MrB.s next SG and are now aware of the tech trade mechanics

I might add that it would be a pitty not to play this SG to the end after we invested so much time and Mm in it- it developed really nicely, but with not knowing that tech uptrading is not possible we had a real disadvantage the time the sneak attack came- with knowing and taking the savegame 5 turns earlier we the AI has a real disadvantage- I have no idea how to level things up between us and the AI to get the natural game flow back again

So my vote: I would be either to eat the lemon and play with mil. trad. or RR coming to late for the sneak attack, or we close this SG and play the one MrB proposed- option 2 is out of question imho