[BNW] Playing the same game over and over until I get it right

[zxcvbob]

I rolled a really challenging map recently, and even tho' it's only emperor level I keep getting my butt kicked. It's a pangaea plus map, and I started in the middle in the jungle, and all the AI's settle towards me. (I usually quit when it looks hopeless rather than play it out) So I'm trying different strategies.

I think it's going to work this time; I'm going straight Liberty into Commerce (haven't unlocked Rationalism yet) and took a Great Engineer for the finisher; plopped him on a jungle tile to get some production. Here's the starting location. I settled on the jungle hill my warrior is standing on.

Spoiler :

I pretty much bee-lined Engineering this time and built the Great Wall. Dido is very close to the northwest, and she has lots of high-production tiles like salt, iron, gems, and horses. Every time I play she runs away with the game. This time, when she backstabbed me and attacked one of my cities, I killed much of her army as they tried to advance thru the hills with the GW working against them, then chased the rest back to Carthage. Then I sacrificed several pikes and siege towers and captured her capital. I hope I didn't make a mistake by accepting a peace deal after that, because she's still pretty strong. (her new capital is Addis Ababa)
I still haven't met a single city state because I'm landlocked; so the diplomacy stage of the game will be interesting.

 

[mbbcam]

I've recently started playing the same map over and over again in different ways, mainly trying out different policy trees (Liberty, Honor or Tradition) to see what effect that will have. But I don't think I would have bothered with your start because there are so few hammers -- none in the first six tiles (unless you move north-east). I not infrequently roll ten or twelve maps before I find one that I will play for longer than 30 turns, and many I reject on first sight of the start position. Also (I think) the "Plus" map scripts have the City States on islands, so if you don't start on the coast you are at a disadvantage. I would have thought that a start like this one would have been tailor-made for going Tradition, and going tall, with perhaps only two cities, if there genuinely isn't any space. Keep the peace for as long as possible, and aim for a Science victory. But I know that exploring tha map can reveal all sorts of unexpected things!

 

[zxcvbob]

This map is so bad in the early game, I wanted to see if it was even playable. The starting location isn't horrible once you get a quarry on the marble and get some of the jungle chopped -- which takes a long time. When I tried Tradition, it took too long to build a settler, and not enough gold to buy one. I may try Tradition again and just build military units and expand by warmongering. But I'm going to finish this Liberty run first. I settled 3 cities and I've taken 2 capitals so far. I took the God-King pantheon and that helped a lot early, but I didn't found a religion and the AI's quickly converted my city and spoiled that.

Spoiler :

Dido did declare war on me again, during the Worlds Fair while I was focused on that and she was building up for attack. It was a pretty expensive war for both of us but moreso for her, and she offered me all her luxuries and GPT for peace and I accepted. I'm going to have to take her out soon; nobody else is really much of a threat -- except maybe Ethiopia because he has the Forbidden Palace and a lot of CS allies.

The luxury banning going on in the WC is getting annoying and there's not much I can do about it. And it's my supposed friends who keep proposing the bans.

 

[beetle]

(I usually quit when it looks hopeless rather than play it out) So I'm trying different strategies.

Good for you to persevere!

I think it's going to work this time; I'm going straight Liberty into Commerce (haven't unlocked Rationalism yet) and took a Great Engineer for the finisher; plopped him on a jungle tile to get some production. Here's the starting location. I settled on the jungle hill my warrior is standing on.

Emperor is forgiving, but planting the GE and giving up the river are not FWIW what I would characterize as strong play. watermill > hill+mountain

...Then I sacrificed several pikes and siege towers and captured her capital...

Sounds like you are doing fine!

This map is so bad in the early game, I wanted to see if it was even playable.

You have already proved that! Still, I would expected to Tradition to be even easier.

The luxury banning going on in the WC is getting annoying and there's not much I can do about it. And it's my supposed friends who keep proposing the bans.

Be sure to be trading away (lux-for-lux) every copy that you can. If an AI has your lux in a trade, they will not propose to ban it. Also, if my lux is proposed for banning, I trade away my last copy to which ever civ has the most votes.

 

[mbbcam]

I thought I would give this a go, out of curiosity. I don't think I've played Emperor before, having gone straight to Deity from a lower level. I can't remember ever having played Assyria, and I know I've never played a small map, having stuck to standard pretty much exclusively.

I went Tradition and settled three cities with no trouble. I refused all Embassies so they didn't know where I was. Nobody forward settled me. I didn't chop any jungle, preferring to beeline Education, and get the science bonus with universities. After I got machinery, it was pretty much game over, though the lack of production made things a real slog. Things took forever to build. I lost interest by the time I got Artillery, as I knew it was just a question of plodding through the turns. My impression is that the AI doesn't provide much of a challenge at this level. One civ just sat there with only one city for about 150 turns. Another nearly had a city taken out by barbs. In fact, at the beginning it was the barbs that provided the main annoyance. On Deity they get cleared out very quickly.

Anyway, I'd say that Tradition works fine. Build your settlers when you are three or four pop, and don't send them too far away, given the number of barbs. I was able to steal one worker, and I got another from a barb camp. The AI seemed to lose a lot of settlers and workers to barbs in this game. All good for me!

 

[zxcvbob]

I did try it again with Tradition; I think last time I did Tradition I mixed in some Honor, also I built the Hanging Gardens too soon. I built the Hanging Gardens again this time, but way later. (I'm still gonna finish that Liberty game because I almost never play Liberty) Domination victory on about turn 250. Boudicca settled a crap city 3 tiles away from where I wanted to settle a city. Haile did the same thing, but at least his city was in a decent spot. I declared war on Ethiopia first and puppeted both Harar and Addis Ababa. Then after the war was over I razed Harar and settled New Harar one tile over, and annexed AA. I never did capture that Celtic city that was in the way, nor another crappy city just to the west of it because I realized those were a nice buffer between me and Dido.

The final war, I send a few of my best units on a suicide mission to the east of Dido's easternmost city. Their job was not to capture the city (with a few more reinforcements they could have eventually captured it) but to draw her troops over there while my Foreign Legions and artillery circled around from the west to attack Carthage. It worked, although it took a while because she'd build the Red Fort.

I saw an interesting AI cheat. There was a Roman settler in a barb camp; I was headed there to grab it and an Ethiopian horseman beat me to it. The settler did not turn into a worker, it stayed a settler. (I don't know what Halie did with it; he didn't use it found a new city)

Emperor is forgiving, but planting the GE and giving up the river are not FWIW what I would characterize as strong play. watermill > hill+mountain

I like watermills too. But I thought having 2 hammers instead of one for the first 20 or 30 turns, plus an observatory later and better defense was worth more that the watermill. It also put that hill to the NE in my 2-ring instead of 3-ring.

 

[mbbcam]

I wonder if you are waiting too long to build Settlers with Tradition. I usually reckon I have to have three cities settled by turn 50. I've seen other players leave units hanging around a good city spot from about turn 30 -- sometimes you can divert an AI settler, or even capture it.

I found this guide very useful for Tradition:

Tradition: Three Cities Approaches

Moriarte's guide to Liberty is often cited as a good one, though you probably know it:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503931

Why don't you give Deity a try? Much to be learned that way

 

[beetle]

Why don't you give Deity a try? Much to be learned that way

I think that is correct. Emperor is so forgiving, one cannot really tell out what is strong play and what is not. Everything you do works well enough!

 

[zxcvbob]

Pretty sure my problem is I'm not getting my first settler out quickly enough. Everything else flows from that, but at king and emperor i can usually get away with it. Also every city should build a granary or a watermill before the library -- but I might have to buy a library in the 3rd or 4th city to speed up the national college. Another thing I chronically do wrong is not annexing captured capitals right away after the resistance ends.

I started this again. Tradition, Commerce, and it may be over before I get to Rationalism. My first three cities are Assur, Nineveh, and Carthage. The rest are falling like dominoes. Everybody hates me but it doesn't matter.

 

[mbbcam]

There seems to be a consensus that you only need three self-founded cities, and my experience suggests that you need to have all of them settled by about turn 50, or you are going to be too slow to reach certain milestones. (There is a strategy that entails using Liberty to found six to nine cities, but it works best with certain civs, and requires a lot of space. Acken wrote a post describing the strategy which you can find on these forums.) On Deity you have to be ruthless and can't afford to "potter about" building things that are not going to help you. When all is said and done, this is a numbers game, and sadly I'm not a mathematician. There are numerous occasions in which I will build a library or an archer before a granary, or perhaps build a caravan to leech science from a neighbour, so I don't think it is a good idea to be wedded to building things in a set order. The question you always have to ask yourself, it seems to me, is "what benefit am I going to get from this building / unit / etc?" If you don't have wheat or deer tiles, the benefit from a granary will be less. Depending on the situation, it may be more beneficial to build a worker (if you cannot steal one) and improve tiles to give you food, rather than build a granary. But one has to look at the numbers -- those provided by the map -- rather than recipes (though strategies like those provided by Tabarnak and Moriarte are very good). Creative players can do some surprising things -- I once saw a video in which one of the very best players built four or five scouts in succession then built two settlers. No monument, because, as he observed, it comes free with Tradition. He wiped the floor with the opposition.

 

[zxcvbob]

I've recently started skipping the monument in my capital when I go Tradition, even if I don't get a culture ruin. It seems to take forever to get to the opener, but it's not that bad after. You save the hammers for the monument, and more importantly the 1 GPT -- which doesn't sound like much but it is in the ancient and classical eras. The free one comes just in time for settling your second city. If I open Honor too (raging barbs eating my lunch) I do build the monument, otherwise it takes too long to get the 4th policy. I also don't do this with Ethiopia.

I have used a scout-n-archer rush to capture a close capital before. It's kind of unusual; you move all the scout in at once to surround the city and the enemy can't kill them fast enough. You lose most of the scouts but not your archers, and enough scouts survive to take the city. The nice thing about scouts is they are as fast as horses in rough terrain. And they are cheap to build (okay, that's 2 things)

 

[mbbcam]

A couple of advantages to playing Deity (yes, there are some!) are that barbs get cleared out very quickly, and the AI has money to buy things from you. Actually, another advantage is that they have workers you can steal. But they all have two cities by about turn 4 or 5. Swings and roundabouts.

 

[beetle]

I've recently started skipping the monument in my capital when I go Tradition, even if I don't get a culture ruin.

I have found this to be the case as well, the free one comes soon enough. And loosing the free Amphitheater to a free Monument is not much of a loss, since it takes awhile to unlock the tech for Amphitheaters.

You save the hammers for the monument, and more importantly the 1 GPT.

No, even early, the 1 gpt is not at all relevant. Accelerating policy acquisition is the point of Monuments, which is why they are early in the queue for non-Tradition play. But the turns it takes to build the Monument is almost as many turns as having the Monument gains you, so (for Tradition play) it is a wash. So again, with Tradition, you are building the Monument early because you want to squeeze 60 extra hammers from Legalism. That’s a bit sketchy!

If I open Honor too (raging barbs eating my lunch) I do build the monument, otherwise it takes too long to get the 4th policy.

Opening Honor is not strong play except in the most unusual situations. Raging Barbs is my preferred setting. Building an extra Warrior is better than wasting an early policy.

I have used a scout-n-archer rush to capture a close capital before.

I cannot say I have tried that. I would rather use a Warrior, which (if it has the Cover promotion) will survive the encounter. One Warrior is about the same number of hammers as two Scouts.

 

[mbbcam]

@zxcvbob I don't know if you ever watch videos of people playing, but if you haven't, you might benefit from seeing a couple. I've definitely learned a lot from Acken and peddroelm.

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Watching peddroelm hold off the Huns for dozens of turns is highly educational!!

 

[jrwh]

I realized something recently, and it put a damper on my enjoyment of the game. Many of you may already know this, but things as simple as the direction you move your initial warrior will result in the AI perhaps forward settling you with their extra settler (on deity), or moving it in another direction. Basically the entire game is scripted.

If, for example, on a particular map you move your warrior two tiles to the right, and you get forward settled, *every* time you reload the map and do that you'll get the same result. If you move your warrior two tiles to the left, the AI will settle a different location (and will settle that exact same location every time you start the game with this movement).

So if you're rerolling the same map over and over with the goal of improving, you can manipulate the early game by figuring out an optimal set of warrior moves that scripts the AI into settling one place or another, or building a certain wonder or not, etc. The rabbit hole goes much deeper than that, for example if you discover ruins in the same order every time you will get the same rewards, if you don't like the rewards you got you can just change the order in which you find them, but yeah. It makes the game a bit less fun for me knowing there's a predetermined response just based on where I move that has nothing to do with an actual strategy or tactic by the AI.

 

[mbbcam]

Can you point to the code that achieves this (for the Warrior)? I wouldn't rule anything out, but I am highly sceptical. It seems improbable that people on these forums would not have noticed this and reported it before. I don't recall ever having seen this reported, and people have done a lot of work with mods such as Vox Populi to change how the game works. Frankly, I'd be amazed if they hadn't tried to change this if they had found it in the code, and some of them must have a very deep knowledge of the code. You would need to conduct proper controlled trials to be able to determine that this is a real effect. I'm a psychologist, among other things, and nothing is more common than human beings misinterpreting evidence or being influenced by factors they are unaware of (see the Fundamental Attribution Error or some of the work done by John Bargh (https://www.amazon.com/Before-You-Know-Unconscious-Reasons/dp/1501101218) and others. So while I don't think it's impossible, I'd want to see more evidence before I took the idea regarding the Warrior move on board. No disrespect, but I just have my doubts.

Have you also tried the option for resetting the Random Number Generator?

 

[mbbcam]

@zxcvbob I just found this video, which is not too long, and you might find it interesting:

It is Acken playing a 3 city Tradition opening, surrounded by AIs. He mentions using units to block the AI from settling in the spots he wants to use.

 

[beetle]

I realized something recently, and it put a damper on my enjoyment of the game. Many of you may already know this, but things as simple as the direction you move your initial warrior will result in the AI perhaps forward settling you with their extra settler (on deity), or moving it in another direction. Basically the entire game is scripted.

The RNG is definitely in a set pattern, but I do not think it is scripted as you describe. Moving your Warrior does not effect RNG, so that would not change the outcome. But every combat, every ruin hit, and every spy action changes things.

If this bugs you, there is also a setting for new RNG seed, but that kind of just compounds the defect. If you don’t like “how the dice roll” you can use that to force a different outcome.

 

[raider980]

I gave it a shot and got my butt kicked too. Dido conquered my capital around T140. I still have the Mayan capital but I was dead anyway. Dido brought more units than I have seen in a long time. I went Tradition and I was doing ok but that start is tough. My second city was way better than my capital. Civ 5 is so slow in the beginning anyway and with a bad start it just crawls.

 

[zxcvbob]

I gave it a shot and got my butt kicked too. Dido conquered my capital around T140. I still have the Mayan capital but I was dead anyway. Dido brought more units than I have seen in a long time. I went Tradition and I was doing ok but that start is tough. My second city was way better than my capital. Civ 5 is so slow in the beginning anyway and with a bad start it just crawls.

That's almost exactly what happened to me the first time. (glad it wasn't just me) I played it again (about the 3rd or 4th time) and settled my second city quicker (took *forever* to build that settler) and attacked Carthage before she could build a bunch of elephants to attack me. Worked a lot better, and I snowballed from there.