Nobles' Club CXXX: Gilgamesh of Sumeria

[dalamb]

It can help if you link to earlier messages at the beginning of new ones; I try to remember to do that in those few games where I post more than once.

 

[JSS]

Deity, 1565AD, Conquest

Spoiler :

Not much to say. Settled on the Marble, expanded into 9 cities, set up the city south of Uruk as a Bureaucracy capital, libbed MT in 620AD, and mass upgraded a ton of HAs using 3 GM trade missions. Frederick had Ramesses as his vassal and was quite powerful, so I declared on him, and bribed JC and Monty on him too. Took almost all of his cities and capped both Ramesses and Freddy.

Then I switched to rep + mercantilism, got to Steel and Rifling and sweeped the whole continent in a quick succession.

Easy map after the biggest AI was gone. The rest of the AIs didn't have enough land to settle an adequate number of cities to be of any threat.

 

[hankinsohl]

Emperor, normal speed, no huts/events. Domination victory in 1705.

Spoiler :

I settled on the marble. Two things became apparent early on:

1) I'd need to grab starting territory as soon as possible.
Starting in the northeast corner of the map, I'm boxed in by the Germans to the south and by the Egyptians to the west. Therefore I grew to size 5 and started pumping out settlers grabbing the elephants, gems, and silver. These three happy resources allowed me to grow my cities a bit more than normal and, by cottaging a lot of land I was able to keep afloat. My tech rate was bad, but the aggressive neighbors weren't out-teching me.

2) I'd be at war soon.
The warmongering AIs - Julius Caesar, Montezuma, Tokugawa, etc. almost guaranteed early conflict. With this in mind I planned on an early elepult campaign.

I was able to secure 6 nice cities early on with room for additional expansion which I did not take advantage of. Instead, I started teching towards construction/horseback riding.

I was able to make quite a few trades early on due to the glacial tech pace of the AIs. To keep afloat I self-teched Priesthood early on and built Ziggurats everywhere and then Monarchy for additional expansion.

Once construction was in, I amassed about 15 elephants and declared on Germany. I chose Germany because they were the only civ in Confucianism and because they had only 4 cities. Since my next 2 closed neighbors (Egypt and Rome) were in Judaism, I adopted Judaism just prior to declaring.

Surprisingly, Germany was able to immediately bribe the Egyptians into war against me.

No matter - after taking 2 of Germany's cities he capitulated. I started mass producing trebs and soon defeated the Egyptians.

From this point on the game was basically won. I kept cranking out units while teching more military techs. In the end I capped all civs but the Romans and was in position to wipe Rome off the map with Cavalry when I won a domination victory.

 

[JSS]

@hankinsol:

Nicely done. 2 tips:

- Compared to the average circumstances, I don't think you could've been boxed in that bad. Don't get afraid upon seeing an enemy border with your scouting unit. It takes a lot of time from an AI to settle another city towards you.

- Don't pay too much attention to AIs that are not your bordering neighbors unless they have a specific reason to hate you.

 

[hankinsohl]

Thanks for the tips!

Spoiler :

I usually play fractal and thus the relatively near proximity of multiple AIs is a bit different for me (Pangaea vs. Fractal) which prompted my land grab.

In one or two games I've had trouble with Monte. He'll start by declaring on a neighbor, war for a bit, make peace, and then immediately declare on me even if I'm fairly distant and not particularly disliked. Perhaps this is unusual behavior or maybe it's specific to Monte. Anyhow, an aggressive military buildup seemed best since the behavior ascribed to Monte (i.e., attack distant civ fairly early on with no particular dislike) seems to occur much more frequently if I've got a very weak military rating.

I tend to war late and not build up military enough early on which seemed a risky strategy for this mix of AIs.

In your game JSS, did you try to grab the elephants with one of your first cities (very expensive since the elephants are so distant) or did you opt for a more gradual expansion?

 

[JSS]

@hankinsohl:

Spoiler :

I didn't get elephants very early (I don't even remember where they were, I played pretty quickly ). Seeing the start and the surrounding lands and after the Aesthetics to Alpha trade it became obvious to go for a Cuirassier rush. But even with no Iron, a Cavalry rush would've been possible with that much good land available.

Re. Monty,

Yeah, I can't blame you for being extra careful with him. He can be pretty crazy sometimes.

 

[Wegason]

Diplomatic Victory, 1926 AD, Noble

Spoiler :

I found this to be a lot of fun, I usually play fractal or continents and so found Pangea a different challenge with all the near neighbours.

I followed this thread and read through it while avoiding pictures to see people's strategy and determine how others play.

I was purposefully more aggressive, used the Vultures early to take Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin from Freddie and capped him early. Used him to keep Julius hemmed in down south and expanded out west from my capital up to the Egyptians.

Monty was his usual aggressive self, he declared on me around the time liberlism came about, fought a stand off-ish war that I accelerated with cavalry and capped him after capturing his capital and a couple of other cities.

Julius and Ramesses were fighting a war for most of the latter part of the game, Tokugawa eventually annoyed me enough to take the war to him and I capped him as well with calvary and infantry.

This left Pericles, Ramesses and Julius. Ramesses was closing in on a cultural victory as the Space Race approached and his culture was putting pressure on my cities and saw one of my coastal's flip. I built up my tanks and declared shortly after targeting one of his three cultural cities, and proceeded to take 4/5 cities. Having lost two attempts at a Diplo I started building my spaceship only to win a Diplo just before I reached the domination threshold (and a few turns before my spaceship was going to reach Alpha).

 

[Kjotleik]

NC 130 Kjotleik of Sumer / Monarch - Marathon - NoUnitDiscount


Sixth update: 1000 BC to 1610 AD: Cultural Victory!


Hello, Civfanatics and non-Civfanatics alike! If you read this post you are probably closer to the former than the latter group...

After having aquired a new PC, Civilization IV is up and running again.

I decided to not install BUG in the customassets folder. Instead I will use the Better BUG AI mod whenever I play forum-games. With the exception that I will change it so that units on Marathon speed doesn't get a discount when trained in-game.

One of the reasons for this is that on my old computer naming units didn't work properly in BUG. Perhaps due to some mix-up with me playing BBAI mod while having BUG 4.4 in customassets.

I was lucky to have stored my save-files for this game on my external hard-drive. Unfortunately, I had not stored my mod there. But after making a new mod with the same name - and same content - the savegame loaded perfectly. Puhhhh!


Now On To The Game...

Spoiler :

I must say - in retrospect - that I feel I made a lot of mistakes in this game. I am used to war, and peace is a bit different. I was constantly afraid of getting declared upon if I stopped research. That is, up to about 1200 - 1400 AD - when I felt comfortable about winning. From then on it became a matter of endurance.


The Map: 1610 AD - On The Winning Turn

Spoiler :

Expansion-wise I settled too many cities. When the last german city joined my empire it became the 19th city of mine. If I had not settled/culture-flipped so many cities I could've kept my maintenance lower, and gotten a faster finish-date. My cities also spent too much time building unneccesary temples. I just built them because I thought I needed them. The reason was simply that I once looked at Eridu, and saw that in order to build a Hindu Mandir I had two Temples left (4/6). What I forgot was that I already HAD built a Mandir in Uruk, so the 4/6 was really a 1/3. I'm so used to Marathon/Huge that I totally forgot I only needed three Temples per Mandir. That's why I settled so many cities... (reducing the number from 19 to 9 would've saved hundreds of Gold in maintenance, I'm sure of it - even without calculating the number).


The Final City List!

Spoiler :

In the end I shamelessly sold eight-thousand-research-point technologies to Tokugawa for sixty to eighty Gold, to enabel myself to keep the slider at 100% Culture "one more turn." Also, some begging from Ramesses II, Frederick and Julius Caesar took place. And I sold all my aquired technologies for a pittance, just to enable said slider to stay all-in at Culture. I guess, in the end, that practice shaved at least five to ten turns off the victory-date.


The Tokugawa Trades!

Spoiler :

There was no real war for me in this game. I expanded peacefully - with Ramesses II and Frederick as shields against Montezuma and Julius Caesar, respectively. Rome was pleased/friendly with me most of the game, but I never really TRUST Julius to be my friend in a game of Civilization IV...

It was me, Frederick, Julius Caesar and Ramesses II that made up the Hindu block. I didn't really follow Tokugawa, Montezuma and Pericles in religion switches. All I noticed was that they were annoyed or furious with me most of the game.

I lost a total of two(!) (2!) units in this game. One Warrior to a lion, and one Chariot to Montezuma as he declared on Ramesses II, when the latter had a defensive pact with me and Frederick. My chariot was on a hill "scouting" towards the Aztecs, and got so surprised by the moronic declaration of war that he forgot to fight back. Ramesses II stood his ground against Monty, and my sorry excuse for a stack just went into Aztec lands to pillage a bit before Monty decided to give me money for peace.


Lost two (2) units... my undisputed personal best...

Spoiler :

I spent a total of nine (9) Great Artists in my three legendary cities. Uruk (zero), Eridu (two) and Kish (seven). 1608 AD I created the great works. Kish became legendary there and then, while Uruk and Eridu had to wait to the inbetween-turn to reach 150k Culture Points.

I did get ten Great Artists, though. Duke Ellington was born 1608 AD (inbetween turns), but was too late to make an impact...


Demographics: Soldiers? What Are They Good For?

Spoiler :

My Final Civics!

Spoiler :

My Place In History

Spoiler :

Eridu: As Seen From The West

Spoiler :

I know this is not as detailed an update as the others. However, as I didn't have the BUG mod running on my new computer, I didn't feel like digging up all the information on my own...

Also, the next time I try to play a Noble's Club game, I will not have the problem of a soon-to-die computer to interrupt my progress...

I had hoped for some comments about what I can improve in my gameplay from someone a little bit more confident in winning Civ IV at a reasonable high level. After all, why would I bother putting all this effort into writing up a game if no-one told me how to improve? To show off? I'm not really good enough for that (yet!).

Yours Sincerely
Kjotleik of Norway

 

[dalamb]

Glad you got Civ running again, and congrats on the victory.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Kjotleik, thanks for the cultural victory write up!

Not sure all my comments below apply to your game, but I hope you welcome them anyway.

I would consider running mercantilism to run an extra artist and possibly generate more Great Artists for quicker win, although 1608 AD is already a very good win date for a cultural victory. A cultural victory can be even quicker by building no cathedrals in the great artist farm and bombing it to legendary; this way one can get by with 6-7 cities (7th city is used to built a temple to avoid building it in the great artist farm city). Ideally research should be shutdown down after Liberalism. One can still slowly research via Representation and The Pyramids. Music should be an early focus and Cathedrals should be built around 1 AD via Slavery.

I recommend reading jesusin's article about cultural victories in the higher difficulty levels.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Kjotleik]

@Sun Tzu Wu

I most assuredly do welcome your insights on this matter. As I "never" usually win by Culture, I'm not at all familiar with what is the best course of action once the decision to go for Culture is made.

And you shouldn't mistake me for being unhappy with a 17th century win. But the fact is I felt it could've been much sooner had I not made all the "noobishly" mistakes that I think I did... (from lack of experience with Culture-wins, obviously).

I believe you are right in that seven cities would've been a lot faster. I wasted too much money on maintenance in this game. That much I have learned from playing Noble's Club #130, at least.

Mercantilism... hmmm... yes, that would be a good thing to test out. I didn't really consider it in this game... maybe that too was a mistake on my part...

Thanks to you mentioning it, I now know about jesusin's article. I will have to look that up in the war academy.

Also, I did not shut down research early enough, I believe. I was just so afraid of Montezuma actually defeating Ramesses II (perhaps with the help of Tokugawa) that I didn't shut down research at Liberalism. If he had, I would've been a sitting duck, with practically no military - neither in quality nor quantity. In this game, the only thing that stopped an Aztec declaration of war against me was the fact that Ramesses II was a buffer between us (apart from the time when I had this defensive pact with Ramesses II - and I lost a Chariot because of the Aztec DoW on Egypt).


@dalamb

Thank you, I appreciate your kind words.


In general:

I didn't decide from turn one that this should be a Cultural Victory game. It just happened that I had plenty of room to expand. No real threat of being boxed in from either Ramesses II or Frederick.

As I'm at the present time tired of Conquest/Domination wins, I didn't want my write-up to be another one of those. Perhaps at a later stage I may do that kind of game. But right now, in the fall of 2013, I'd rather win a Marathon Time Victory than an early Conquest/Domination win. So many options... so many different strategies and tactics... this game will never truly get boring. If I try out all the different approaches towards it, that is.



Yours Sincerely
Kjotleik of Norway



PS!
If anyone feels the urge to play my game to get a better finish date...here is NC 130 Kjotleik.7z attached...

Spoiler Contents of NC 130 Kjotleik.7z :

Mod:
0001_NoUnitDiscount

Replay:
AD 1610 Replay

Saves:
1000 BC
1000 AD
1500 AD

 

[Kjotleik]

Diplomatic Victory, 1926 AD, Noble

Spoiler :

... Julius and Ramesses were fighting a war for most of the latter part of the game, Tokugawa eventually annoyed me enough to take the war to him and I capped him as well with calvary(?) and infantry.

You threatened him with a stack of Christian Missionaries???

Way to go...

[Sorry, I couldn't let this go... I got this really funny picture in my head ]



Yours Sincerely
Kjotleik of Norway