News: WOTM 10 Pre-Game Discussion

[Lexad]

Meditation - Phood - Writing - CoL via Oracle to get castes (speed up border growth by several turns at finisg) and Chouses. Frankly, with such a great number of civs you might need to keep many cities to keep new AI from capturing the land.

 

[archphoenix]

I am so inclined to go warring until about 500 BC and then switch and head toward UN or Stars.

how about give some advice on how to keep attitude under aggressive AI?

 

[Erkon]

Meditation - Phood - Writing - CoL via Oracle to get castes (speed up border growth by several turns at finisg) and Chouses. Frankly, with such a great number of civs you might need to keep many cities to keep new AI from capturing the land.

I indent to keep all cities. But the gold invested into the techs can be used to run negative income instead. The hammers invested into the Oracle can be used for units instead and thus reach the domination limit quicker.

The Chouses will reduce maintenance with perhaps 5 gpt for the cities in general. The hammers can instead be used to capture new cities / build settlers.

I look forward to see if my economy will crash or not

 

[archphoenix]

armed with civ4-sgotm4 lurker, I study first 70turns, post spreadsheet to ask for further help:

at 70turns(1990BC):
researched alphabet at 1930BC(69T).
capital tile gem, stone, marble improved,
built 2 fish boat,
built 1 worker,
built 2nd city at 2680BC(44T).
capital built library.

 

[EEO]

What is needed for a domination victory?

Bronze Working
Hunting
Animal Husbandry
Sailing
The wheel
Archery (for horse archers)
Mysticism (for obelisks)
Masonry (for capital production)
Horseback Riding (for dominating the world)
Agriculture (optional)
Iron Working (optional)

Did I miss anything?

Most of your AI opponents will have Longbows before 500 AD. Do you plan to get domination before ? Otherwise, at least Construction will be needed and therefore Writing and Mathematics. If you follow this path, Currency and Code of Laws will certainly help to stabilize your economy.

 

[Lexad]

Seconding EEO,
Tightly-packed map and Agressive AI imply that AI will stop its expansion fast and invest recources which would've went to settlers and worker in buildings (libraries, etc) and troops. Long-term development will be slower, but short-term faster due to earlier start of extensive development phase, meaning more advanced units in cityguard.

 

[Erkon]

Most of your AI opponents will have Longbows before 500 AD. Do you plan to get domination before ? Otherwise, at least Construction will be needed and therefore Writing and Mathematics. If you follow this path, Currency and Code of Laws will certainly help to stabilize your economy.

You are correct that cats are needed, so I will have to bypass capitals with longbowmen and cities on hills. But I think 2CR promoted axes can take them down in 20% cities on plains. I'm not sure though that most of the AI will have feudalism at 500 AD. We'll see

Seconding EEO,
Tightly-packed map and Agressive AI imply that AI will stop its expansion fast and invest recources which would've went to settlers and worker in buildings (libraries, etc) and troops. Long-term development will be slower, but short-term faster due to earlier start of extensive development phase, meaning more advanced units in cityguard.

I think they will build troops due to my DoW on them. For sure it will be a bloodfest - I can't wait!

 

[Big Pig]

I think they will build troops due to my DoW on them. For sure it will be a bloodfest - I can't wait!

Its a Viking thing......

 

[LowtherCastle]

how about give some advice on how to keep attitude under aggressive AI?

Here's a partial list off the top of my head:

• Don't adopt a religion. (Unless you're targetting certain AIs to gain plus modifiers with, at the expense of negative modifiers with others.)
• Decide which AIs are most important to you for tech trading or avoiding DOW or whatever and agree to their demands
• Some AIs are not likely to spend much time as high as Cautious with you, at least early on. If so, forget about them. You've got a lot to choose from and you won't please them all...
• Open borders and resource trading will eventually get you at least +1 each.
• Gifting a (any) tech early on usually scores you a permanent +4. If you can afford it, this is one of the best ways to improve relations.
• If you (agree to) DoW someone, you will get negative modifiers with any AI that is pleased or above with that AI.
• You can reject all of Gandhi's demands. He doesn't care (although he IS disappointed...).
• Contiguous borders will eventually create negative modifiers, so sooner or later you may have trouble keeping your neighbors at Cautious or above.

armed with civ4-sgotm4 lurker, I study first 70turns, post spreadsheet to ask for further help:

Nice description. Start looks good, but to evaluate, you need to know what your goals with this opening are? Plus: How many civs did you meet? What techs were you able to get with Alpha?

Note: The gems tile appears to be a river tile, starting with 2, so improved it should be 7, if I'm not mistaken. (Which also, incidentally, means you shouldn't need to the road to get the happy if you settled in place, just for transportation.)

 

[archphoenix]

thanks very much I play C63's test save(thanks to C63),
which gem tile yield 6 commerces.

 

[MarkM]

Thanks LtC. One thing I've really wanted to improve is my understanding/awareness of AI personalities, I see lots of discussion about tendencies of individual ones but don't have a comprehensive understanding. This game seems like an appropriate time to work on that! Is there any good CivF (or other) resource that give an overview/reference of each AI leader personality diplomatic/trade tendencies? I don't see anything in War Academy articles but maybe I missed it.

Still haven't had chance to play island test save yet, but thinking about this game in idle moments, I'm pumped!

 

[Conquistador 63]

My bad, I forgot to add the river tile, as noted by LtC.
Incidentally, I tried it last night and was able to get Feudalism from Oracle around 1600BC IIRC. I then went for Alpha to get stuff like sailing, AH, IW, etc. but had to quit before I was ready to start warring with the LBs and cats.
In hindsight, while it is cool to get a ~1600 beakers tech, it is probably better to invest in the resource-locating techs (AH,IW) as horses or iron could be just lying next to our capitol, allowing us to start warring earlier.
Has anyone succeeded in settling mainland (from an island start) with a fast sailing approach?

@MarkM: the best source that I know of is Ori's spreadsheet.
Related info on AI Attitude is available in this thread, also by Ori.

 

[BLubmuz]

Using Oracle for feudalism can be interesting, with a protective leader, anyway a CS sling is possible, mainly thanks to gems.
and thanks to the protective archers we can skip BW, to speed up the sling.
Longbows are less expensives than maces, but i hardly can see them as attack units.

The 2 tiles west are land, thus a peninsula is possible, and if it's an island settle in one of those tiles, or in the last visible one can be good, with all those resources overlap can be doable.

We can expect lots of early wars, aggressive AI is aggressive not only respect the human.

It would be interesting, after my (not submitted) not satisfying try with the last WotM.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Ori et al.'s spreadsheet, linked above by C63, is the Bible for me. It's got so much useful info I don't know how anyone can play without it. It takes some study to understand, but it's well worth it. One detail that may be particularly useful for this game is the detail on the percentage of AIs that need to know a tech before a particular AI will be willing to trade it.

For example, an AI may be willing to trade Iron Working on turn 97 because 40% of the AIs (+ you) he has met know IW. On Turn 98 he meets another AI who still doesn't know IW and now he's unwilling to trade it...

Beware...

 

[LowtherCastle]

Most of your AI opponents will have Longbows before 500 AD.

I'm not certain this is a given. In my very limited experience, AI research rates are clearly accelerated when I bee-line to Alpha and trade a lot. When I do the Moonsinger Swordsman Rush, AI's don't get to LBs nearly as fast as otherwise.

@Erkon, the solution is self-evident (for your challenge...). Build a galley or 2 and send your 17 archers out radially to pillage their assigned AIs. Then mop up with your HAs. The only question is, can you afford the 17 archers? I guess you could focus on the 10 AIs at the top of the GNP graph.

Do this and you will earn the Axis of Evil Award.

 

[Thalatta]

Kill'em! Kill'em all! They will all feel pain. They will all be crushed. They will not be spoken to, apart from the head-on-a-pole thing. No trade with non-vassals. Pure kill'em all style, yes?

Simple rules:
(a) First build: work boat. Send north-east (clock wise along coast) and DoW every AI. If boat is lost, build second and send north-west. Deliberately avoiding AIs not permitted.
(b) DoW AI at first contact. Capitulation ok (and trade with vassals ok). No peacy allowed without capitulation.
(c) Any start save allowed.

Competition: fastest victory. Anyone up for the challenge?

I like your style. Work boat diplomacy...

 

[The Navy Seal]

I think it's agreed world domination!

 

[lightsedge]

My bad, I forgot to add the river tile, as noted by LtC.
Incidentally, I tried it last night and was able to get Feudalism from Oracle around 1600BC IIRC. I then went for Alpha to get stuff like sailing, AH, IW, etc. but had to quit before I was ready to start warring with the LBs and cats.
In hindsight, while it is cool to get a ~1600 beakers tech, it is probably better to invest in the resource-locating techs (AH,IW) as horses or iron could be just lying next to our capitol, allowing us to start warring earlier.
Has anyone succeeded in settling mainland (from an island start) with a fast sailing approach?

Yeah I thought about trying for Feudalism. Longbows wouldn't be that bad for attacking. There are no real counters, and you get free Drill (although, does first strike suck, or is it just me?). You don't get City Raider though, and I'm not sure about their cost effectiveness (don't have the info on hand). You also get Vassalage and the ability to vassalize too, which are quite nice.

There is significant downside to going for Feudalism slingshot though. You don't have time to get the resource-locating techs, as you mentioned, or alphabet, before the slingshot. You may miss out on having early axemen. You delay your rush (although longbows are much more powerful than archers). And of course there's always the possibility that the AI will beat you to the Oracle, especially if you go for Stonehenge. Even with these risks, it's still pretty tempting.

I tried a fast sailing approach, and was able to get a settler on a boat a few turns before turn 50. I did it by building only workboats until I got Sailing, allowing the city to grow while building a galley, and whipping the settler when the galley completed. This gave me a good chance of finding unclaimed land. The problem with this approach is that the good sites are probably already taken, and you really have to worry about cultural growth. It's unlikely that you will end up with more than a few workable tiles.

I'll settle the island first (if it is one), and build my attack stack. Given the theme, I think I'll try a D-day style landing.

Some questions remain for me:
1. What to attack with?
2. How early to attack? When is cultural defense going to be a big problem (esp. if I try an archer rush)?
3. Tech to alphabet, or go for a slingshot?
4. If slingshot, Feudalism, CoL, Alphabet, or other?
5. Build Stonehenge or Oracle or neither? I'm not sure you can get both.
6. Settle in place for two cities, or go for gold and 3 cities? This would be for a longer tech and buildup phase. I'm leaning towards 2.

 

[budweiser]

I just did a test game where I built SH, but I messed up and got a GS instead of a GP so I missed chistianity, but I still self researched feudalism and had longbows by 80 AD. I was sort of just messing around with the longbows and attacking straight up with them, but add in some cats and they will tear through the ancient age units.

Is worker first better or work boat if you go for BW? Because you could chop the boat or whip the worker? There is only a precious few chops here.

 

[Monthar]

I tried that test map several times with different strategies and got creamed bad in all of them. I did manage to get a 2nd city built once, but in most of the test runs the other civs beat me to the location I wanted. It just seems to be a bit too many enemies for a small map.