Open Game: Sandalphon

[PekkaR]

All those plains is why I don't understand the love for tectonics.

I feel exactly the same way, but recently played an Emperor plains start on a Small Erebus map with my Malakim. I was isolated by ocean and mountains, and my whole area was pretty much plains hills. 4 possible city spots with following food resources: fish and crabs, wheat and fish, cow and sheep and 1 plains farm, or multiple plains farms. Otherwise, plains hills and couple of happiness resources.

I founded capital next to the fish and crabs and teched into Fishing (and soon Sailing for Lighthouses) from the start. Very different from the usual early turns. Eventually settled all 4 city spots, kept building economy thanks to the isolated start, then later built a Stygian Guard army and destroyed the rest of the world to win.

I'm not feeling quite so badly about plains starts anymore, though without the coastal crutch Agrarianism is a must just to emulate bad grasslands starts. I'd give this save game a go if I wasn't using patch i already.

 

[Bill Bisco]

Patch I should work just fine for this game.

 

[PekkaR]

Patch I should work just fine for this game.

You're right. I think I'll chicken out on playing Deity anyway, though your reports have made for great reading. Please keep playing that game, looking at the big Falamar blob on map it should be far from over.

I'm trying out a Tectonics map of my own.

 

[tharg]

Ok domination victory on turn 379.
Started in place building warrior and researching mysticism sending both units out to explore. Standard I think.

Research went something like
Mysticism, Farming, Calendar, Exploration, Crafting, Mining, Bronze working, Education (Bulbed KoE), Writing,Warfare, Animal Husbandary, Trade….
Next made warhorses a priority.

Builds went something like,
Warrior Warrior, Elder Counsel, Worker, Warrior, Warrior, Warrior, Settler.
I had three early wonders, my first wonder was catacomb Libralus which I build while I was waiting for other cities to build libaries, then Great Library and Form of the Titan.
I consider Form of the Titan, and Ride of the Nine Kings to be the two key wonders for Sandy.

First Settler want in nice valley and second on cost next to horses. After that I relied mainly on captured cities.

Exploring I found a nice valley with lots of flood plains where my first settler went. My warrior found a couple of huts for some cash, And a Dungeon just next to Joans which I kept exploring (loosing a settler and a warrior in the process) until eventually getting a sage. Didn’t want any accident so immediately bulbed KofE.

I was careful not to remove the barrow just NE of the city as it proved a good source of EP which after all is what Sandy is all about. I consider him an action player, just make sure he is getting action somewhere. For the first couple of hundred turns I just played with the barbarians.

The new beta has the barbarians acting all different, they kept ignoring me and attacking Cardith so I had to channel them onto a plain tile so I could attack them. Athough Orthus hasn’t changed much, repeated attacked my mountain city across a river until he finally killed himself.

Picked up two barbarian cities before finally declaring on Cardith around turn 218. The army was mainly horse based. With the 85% withdrawl horses are much more likely to survive to 26Ep, which is what fighting is all about. And when I built RotNK in my second city it became even more clear-cut. Although one of my Axmen was turned into a hero by a random event, which was cool especially as I did not build Rathus until right towards the end. For some reason Poisons never seems worth while researching.

Cardith was straghforward and gave me access to four more barbarian cities and Archeron. The dragon was easy with Spirit. Found a long string of barbarin cities to the SE as well all of which kept me busy. Split Joans with Capica. Found a large L shaped island that everyone had ignored. If the AI can’t understand the boat promotion system then make it simpler is my opinion. Rather good AI than a cool promotion system (climbs down).

I eventual run out of barbarians and declared on Faeryl around turn 300, for some reason I don’t understand Thome immediately declared on me. This had me a little concerned until I realised he did not have the troops to back up his actions. Faeryl and then Thome soon capitulated to me. For most of the game I had been behind Capica/Basuim, but this put me in the lead.

I had decided that Order was the best choice for religion. Playing Sider with most of my GP being merchants in the capital I really have to go with God King the whole game, which means massive city maintenance, so I wanted the option of building basillica, However Capica beat me too it (Grrr), guess can’t do everything. But I still went with order. Which meant that Capica was really friendly for the whole game.

I used scorch effectively to increase area by building on the top and bottom ice.

When up to around 45% it was Sandy/Faeryl/Thome vs Capica/Basman/Charadon vs Gyr/Rhoanna/Keelyn with Falmar on his own. Gyr with Falmar declared on Capica.. I accepted Capica’s invitation. Was impressed when Falmar used maelstrom on me. A few turns later Gyr capitulated to Capica and the next turn Falmar capitulated to me. Game over.

Edit:
Here is an early image, I'll post a save once I work out how to do it.
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/9687/secondcity.jpg

Orthus butting head against wall.
http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt100/Tharrg/brickwall.jpg

Turn 379
http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt100/Tharrg/Sandywin.jpg

300 turns and no one has colonized island
http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt100/Tharrg/IslandTurn300.jpg

 

[Bill Bisco]

Posted saves and Screenshots Tharg

 

[tharg]

Save of just about to win, just ask Falmar to capitualte.

 

[Bill Bisco]

Turn 300, 200, and 100 too please.

 

[tharg]

Cardith just about to get it 210
http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt100/Tharrg/Cardith.jpg

Cheeky bltch, how many wars does she think I want to be in. And I thoght Council of Esus membership was ment to be a secret!
http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt100/Tharrg/Cheey.jpg

Curious whole game and no one researched CoS.

Here are the saves.

 

[Jet]

When I reloaded the initial save to double-check it before posting it, I lost all my autosaves. So I only have turns 195 and 240.

I won't try to do too much of a play-by-play, but my per-turn notes are below. Basically I just tried playing this exactly how I played before patch H: expand to whatever, tech as far as necessary (T3, T4), then break out. That generally worked OK unless an AI attacked me unprepared, or (occasionally) if an AI got too big to conquer... in the latter case they still wouldn't win except maybe by Time, but it would break my will to play. And other stuff could go wrong; I still resigned the majority of games on settings like these.

Turn 0 to 100

Spoiler :

0 settled in place, sent scout around clockwise]
3 moved warrior to camp barrow, but was already explored by AI
20~ met cardith and capiria, scout popped gold then died to spider in SE
xx Agr, Cal (Agrarianism + Nationhood), Explo, Mysticism
52 Mysticism (Godking + Pacifism) -> Festivals
64 lost 1/7 warriors attacking an orc
66 Festivals -> Crafting
67 first settler sent 2w/ 4 warriors to coast/rice/gold/cows
72 settle coast/rice/gold/cows. rice is in cardith's culture but oh well.
74 crafting -> mining
76 orthus spawns 2N of my second city. gah!
78 orthus kills 1/3 warriors in city #2. first GP is a scientist, academy.
80 injured orthus dies trying to attack third and last warrior in city #2. zing!
82 warrior (1/2 moving to reinforce city #2) miraculously defends against griffon. zing!
83 mining (copper noted) -> BW
86 7 warriors total, start 3rd settler
99 werewolf event, like i care

Turn 100 to 195

Spoiler :

100 BW -> education (en route to drama)
109 education (apprenticeship) -> drama
110 city #3 on the desert hill copper
111 copper hooked up
112 GP #2 merchant, settle in capital
116 OO FIDL
118 dragon in straatus, wherever that is
121 acheron... oh, the message was "barbs are building acheron in straatus".
125 win drama, bulb sanitation -> writing
127 Cardith wants to trade world maps. It's so rare that an AI will actually accept my map that I accept.
129 brewhouse in rice/cow/gold -> warriors
135 writing -> masonry
139 masonry -> construction
140 arturus has a stack of axemen near-ish to my borders. but he's not in war prep. and he doesn't have copper.
148 construction -> archery
151 city #4 on east coast hill wine
154 archery -> AH; start GL
157 AH -> cartography
160 cartography -> fishing. jonas converts to OO, everyone else is RK but not the founder. OB with jonas.
163 meet keelyn, who oddly is the founder of RK. get the engineer event, and even though i've been running crazy surpluses from merchants etc, now i am out of money, and can't buy the engineer.
164 fishing -> earthmother, for diplo.
166 get the great library
170 GP #3, merchant settled in captial
171 earthmother, convert rice city and start arete for the mines wonder
174 cardith has some swordsmen headed my way and is in war prep. he's pleased. they could be for jonas, but we'lll see. i'm not realy prepared
180 arete (wait until capital has RK to start Galdur) -> sailing (en route to trade... then it's fanaticism for the mercurian gate)
185 sailing -> trade... then get to L6 from a barb and switch to warfare. send the L6 to wane in capital.
188 give in to ale demand from keelyn. hey, if you wanted me to buy you a beer all you had to do was ask.
189 warfare -> trade
192 shade #1 merchant capital
194 finally start form of the titan (finished granary and baths first)
195 trade -> philo. GP #4, in rice city, merchant, sent to capital to settle. tech board is not too impressive, but at least the AIs have all the basic worker techs. I have drama, warfare on most of them. most of them have knowledge of the ether on me. masonry+cartography for rhoanna's world map. see some AIs I need to meet. The Lanun have big cities, looks like Falamar.

Turn 195 to 240

Spoiler :

198 Philo -> COL (guess I should have done COL -> Philo). Refuse some tech requests, including from Cardith who drops out of Friendly (oops). 5th city in free grassland space south of floodplains. Jonas declares on Capria (and not me), yay.
200 Rhoanna founds FOL.
201 Win form of the titan. Trade Drama to Keelyn for KOTE+map, and to Cardith for HBR+map.
202 COL -> Priesthood
206 National Epic -> Gal Dur in capital.
207 meet Faeryl
209 Priesthod -> Fanaticism
210 Keelyn declares on Rhoanna.
211 win Bambur. Capria builds the Mercurian Gate. So much for Fanaticism; and possibly, for winning the game. Switch to Feudalism for Royal Guards for defense, and possibly to take on vassals for diplo purposes.
212 GP #5, Merchant settled.
213 Trade Rhoanna Trade+Fishing for Hunting+map. Maybe the Chariots will help her defend against Keelyn.
214 Mett Falamar, OO founder and (while usually a very annoying AI) a possible hope against Capria. Sell him Philo for map+170 (+4 fair trade) and OB.
218 win Gal-Dur. Meet Charadon. Trade Falamar Drama+Priesthood+Warfare+Earthmother for Smelting+map+80.
223 city #6 northern Incense/Horses to get the Horses. Adopt Aristocracy, which improves my break-even science a bit from 175 to 200.
225 Feudalism -> Currency
226 Trade Priesthood to Cardith for the rest of Currency. Start Math.
229 Barb Galley (interesting...) destroys my Fishing Boats)
230 Math -> Engineering. Capria founds and switches to Order, interesting.
238 Capria gives me Military Strategy. Hmm.
240 Arturus declares. He was Pleased, but I wasn't paying attention. He has Champions. The few units I have are over in the East, by the barb cities. Game over.

I suspect it's possible to win from my turn 195 save, but I doubt the 240 can be salvaged, and I'm usually too impatient for replays.

 

[Jet]

All those plains is why I don't understand the love for tectonics.

The reasons I like these settings myself are here.

(That post says wet aridity and 10 civs, but this game was regular aridity and 11 civs, which I like better now.)