Playing with unpopular civs

[Tone]

Thanks but it won't happen. This Portugal game is good fun but it won't be a number 1 game. It'll chart though, which is what I set out to do. Any #1 slots will be a bonus. I've got about 60 turns left and then I'll post an update.

Oh, and my spare time will soon be lost as it will be back to work in another week or so. All good things must come to an end. Still, it's the Vikings next so that should cheer me up. Although I don't rate them for fast finishes, they are one of the most fun civs to play IMO.

 

[Tone]

Not a lot more happened in the Portugal game. I didn't get a second SGL, although I got a number of MGLs towards the end, which were useful for rushing small wonders.

Final date was 1650AD. #3 slot I believe.

Once I finally fought my way through to get the iron connected to my core, my technical superiority shone through and I took over most of the Western part of the map. As well as the quest for more luxuries (I finished with six), I had to fight for most strategic resources. I didn't have salt, coal, oil or uranium. I did have rubber though, but only due to razing an Incan town in my first war with them.

This meant that the game was spent waiting for SGLs every four turns, waiting for the AI to send over some troops so that I could farm for MGLs and the occasional burst of offensive activity when I needed a new resource.

I won't bore you with the minor details as it was pretty tame, although an honourable mention must go to the Mongols for continuing to send over stacks of Keshiks and ACs for my elite tanks to chew up.

Here's the final minimap:

Here's the build order:

and here's a picture of Lisbon

 

[Tone]

I just love playing with the Vikings. They are so much fun. After the disappointments of the last game, I've decided to do another 20K run but this time at a more challenging level and using PtW rather than conquests. GL farming is so much more engaging in this version.

Settings:
Emperor. Large Pangea (80%). No barbs.
Normal/Temperate/3BYO.
No AI respawn.
Rivals: 6
India, France, Spain, Egypt, England, America.

The start:
I was so impatient to start this game that I loaded PtW, this was the first start that I got and I went with it. Yes, I know it's not coastal but I wanted to play right away, OK?

Moving off the game game me loads of bgs and hills. Fan-tast-ic!

I set research to zero (I didn't want to add to the tech pace) and sent a few scouts out to get contacts. I maintained tech parity by trading.

I built a temple once I had traded for CB and then I handbuilt the Pyramids. Trouble is what do you build in PtW once that's done? Oracle? Well the English got that in the resultuing cascade and so I researched Lit myself and then built a Library and the GLib.

However I'm getting ahead of myself. Just after I had started building the Pyramids, the English made an unreasonable demand. I laughed at them and said that they were expansionist and so they can make their own contacts. Lizzie was not amused.

A few turn later, Issy smelt blood...

My people rejoiced It didn't worry me as they were on the other side of the world.

A while later and I had decided to keep Spain occupied in their own back yard whilst I farmed for leaders with my neighbours, the English.

It was a slow process. I built up a stack of warriors, connected my iron (once I'd built the town there) and finally upgraded them. Whilst doing that I built a few spears and archers to keep the English at bay. Then I headed northwards with my army and some settlers and workers to claim the ivory that the English had stolen from my doorstep. I also took some of their silks.

In fighting those wars I had one of those bittersweet moments. I had attacked an archer with a sword which got premoted to elite. It then fought off two English archer counter attacks and

The trouble was that it was redlined and there was a third archer ready to attack.

Never mind, I had so many elites that it was only a matter of time before I got another GL. All the AA wonders had gone by then so I built an army for HE. Once I had my front line set up, the leaders came pretty regularly.

This is the front line at 10AD. I've also got a spear stopping the English from connecting their iron to the west and they have been so busy building units that they have built any culture so their horses remain untapped. They send along archers; my swords kill them. It like taking candy from a baby. When a GL comes along, it can get home to Trondheim to rush a wonder in the following turn.

Once the English got Invention, my spear on their iron would not be secure and so I took that town over. This extended my front a little but I had the military to cope with that by then. I also had Beserks...

My other foes did not last so well. The Indians backed out of the alliance quite soon but the Americans were not happy about their cities that the Spanish razed and, with the help of some friends, gradually wiped them out. As soon as the Spanish were KO'd, the French sneak attacked me. I've used my buddies the Americans as a buffer again whilst I concentrate on the English. However the French appear to be shading that conflict so I'm just preparing a couple of caravels with beserks to raze a few French towns. (Did I mention the word fun before? )

These are the culture builds in Trondheim at 660AD.

I'm heading for Newton and Smiths may also be on the market soon. I've had nine GLs so far (1 KIA, 1 for the army, 6 for Great Wonder rushes and the last one has established a second core on the English border.) This is never going to beat a decent C3C attempt-less wonders and very little chance of an early GL-but I'm having a ball.

 

[azzaman333]

Speaking of unpopular civs, I have started a Huge Dominiation (Monarch) attempt as the Mongols. I have eliminated India and am in the process of killing the Dutch, but both ToA and Pyramids have been built on the other continent (of the Pangaea). Also, the Inca and Russians continually have skirmishes in my lands, so i cant really attack them atm without losing 1 or 2 towns in the process. I have about 25% of the worlds lands at 290 AD, which should lead me to about 800-1200 AD victory. If i have to take lands on the other continent though, my date could blow out to 1500 AD, since I have no decent coastal towns.

 

[Tone]

Definitely an unusual choice! If you have a decent map of your own continent, you can compare the estimate that MapStat gives for your rivals' chunks of land with the domination limit for the map to see if you need to go sailing. Is it too close to call?

 

[azzaman333]

Definitely an unusual choice! If you have a decent map of your own continent, you can compare the estimate that MapStat gives for your rivals' chunks of land with the domination limit for the map to see if you need to go sailing. Is it too close to call?

Without checking the domination limit, 6/9 civs are on my continent, and the other 3 are elsewhere. So its cutting things pretty close.

EDIT: 667 tiles is about 25%. So 1334 tiles for 50%. Every other civ on the continent has about 650 tiles (in total), with unclaimed lands being an extra 450.

(I dont actually know what the dom limit is)

If my math is right, I'm looking at borderline victory.

 

[Tone]

20K victory in 1715AD. This beats the current #1 slot but will not be able to resist a strong challenge from a C3C game.

Picking up from where I left off a few posts ago...

My American ally was having a tough time against the French (whilst I was farming for leaders against the resourceless English) and I was able to strike a nice deal.

I was picking up GLs as soon as I needed them (if not before) and I soon added Newton's Uni and Smith's TP to my wonder collection. However my tech pace was far too slow (Monarchy is poor-maybe Republic would have been smarter?) so I started to be more aggressive with England and started to take over their lands. At some point, I accepted a PT from France after my ally had accepted peace. Not before I'd razed a couple of their core towns on the coast with a few beserkers, which did nothing positive with my foreign relations. The wonders were drying up now anyway and I wanted to press on with getting to the Modern wonders.

My war with England continued whilst I traded with the rest of the world but Egypt were obviously not happy with the money they were contributing towards my research programme.

Never mind. I allied the rest of the world against them to take the brunt of their attacks, as leader farming against cavalry is not such an easy job. The gpt Cleo was giving me was actually from the other civs and once they had allied against her, I actually increased my revenue.

Something told me that the French were not fully commited to our alliance. Joan may well have been off to her frontline with Egypt but a large proportion of her troops seemed to have got a bit lost.

Another alliance with my faithful ally, America, in order to kep the French at arms length and I stepped up the gas against England. I banished them from the main continent and finally took peace almost 2800 years after they first declared on me.

They didn't last much longer though

The Egyptians became my new leader provider, but it got to the stage where I had a leader and nothing to build so I just farmed for elites instead. The Egyptians had some nice lands outside their core and I picked up wines, furs and some gems. I razed a few of the towns close to our borders to stop their raiding cavs from running away again and I sent a few beserkers out to create a bit of mayhem elsewhere.

I even saw something that you don't see in C3C: an AI army.

The trouble was that the world was an unstable place and this was not good for fast research.

I took peace with the Egyptians and tried to concentrate on getting into Modern Times, but a Monarchy economy is not best suited to this. (It's one of the feew times when I wished that I was playing a REL civ.) Still, if I was bad, the AIs were just plain useless. I traded with them, directing them towards Rep Parts and they just about did it in time. They provided no other mandatory tech in that age and so I spent a long time sitting on a GL with nothing to use him for.

I finally got into Modern Times and I was only at war with the French. I wanted another civ to attack me, as it had become a peaceful variant. (I had not declared war on anyone so why start now?) Perhaps they were put off by my strength but a flip from the Indians gave me an opportunity to issue a 'leave or declare' and they didn't disappoint.

They also gave me some nice dyes and a couple of decent stacks to attack. I got two GLs from this stack alone.

It made little difference to the final date though. Not losing that first leader to the English would have meant I had the Hanging Gardens and that would have been much more important than those last ones.

As you can see, outside the AA, I snagged every Great Wonder except Magellan's. I think I've had better luck with the Celts when trying this type of game because of the early GA and a really strong UU which gives a good chance of getting that first GL a bit earlier.

 

[sanabas]

20K victory in 1715AD. This beats the current #1 slot but will not be able to resist a strong challenge from a C3C game.

Hmm, challenge accepted. One C3C viking game coming up. At least I'm guaranteed a coastal start.

 

[Tone]

(I dont actually know what the dom limit is)

IIRC you can use mapfinder with the 4000BC save to find this out.

@sanabas: I thought that this would kick you into action.

 

[Bartleby]

MapStat will tell you the Domination Limit from the start, won't it? (It tells you the Total Tiles on the Territory Tab; 66% of that is the Dom Limit).

 

[sanabas]

IIRC you can use mapfinder with the 4000BC save to find this out.

@sanabas: I thought that this would kick you into action.

I wanted to play with 'zerks anyway. There aren't any viking conquest games in the hof, strangely enough, I was going to play one of them, but getting a 20k slot back works just as well.

Actually, the only two completely empty non-histo tables are large deity & sid conquests. We should take on one of those with the vikings.

 

[Tone]

@Bartleby: I wasn't sure if azzaman had generated the save using mapstat but I think you can still use it to get the dom limit from the original file.

@sanabas: Sid conquest I'm not sure that I'm up to it and even if I was, they have far too many units. Doesn't it get a bit tedious? Deity conquest should be OK but I'm just about to try a 5CC Emperor game with the Indians. I want to try out a few other civs as well but getting an entry in one of those tables does give a number 1 slot. We'll see.

 

[azzaman333]

Domination limit is 1812.

AFAIK, there is;
unclaimed-481
Mongol- 676
Egyptian- 238
Russian- 149
Incan- 218
Netherlands- 57

The are probably some extra lands around near Russia and Egypt (if i recall correctly)

Now for calculator to do its thing.

EDIT: That adds up to 1819, so it appears that I am borderline.

 

[sanabas]

Played a quick viking 20k, and ny the time I had 'zerks to play with, I didn't bother playing with them. I think I conclusively proved PTW games are nowhere near as effective as C3C. I shared a large island with Greece, I did minimal expansion (14 cities total). I built some warriors and archers to upgrade to 'zerks, which shows how long it's been since I played them. I had the Ottos declare on me once from across the sea when I didn't give them something, and no other wars. Only built 9 'zerks, didn't have a single battle all game. One SGL, used for the UN, I missed Pyramids, Bachs, SoZ, Smith's, and still finished in 1650. I'll post build order later, I need to load it and write them down.

 

[Tone]

So it wasn't much of a challange then?

I think that it might have been more to do with the player than the software though.

 

[sanabas]

So it wasn't much of a challange then?

No, not much of one. But it also won't be too much challenge for you to beat 1650 either.

I think that it might have been more to do with the player than the software though.

Nah, there was a whole lot of just pressing enter this game. One more turn syndrome got me again.

 

[superslug]

Actually, the only two completely empty non-histo tables are large deity & sid conquests. We should take on one of those with the vikings.

Is that an unofficial Gauntlet suggestion?

 

[sanabas]

Is that an unofficial Gauntlet suggestion?

Next month, we should have large, sid, portugese conquest.

Don't know how many submissions there'd be, but either of the two empty slots would make for an instructive thread I think.

 

[Tone]

Nah, there was a whole lot of just pressing enter this game. One more turn syndrome got me again.

I've got that at the moment with my 5CC India game. I've got more cash than I know what to do with but I can't convert it into fast research. Large Emperor was possibly not a wise choice.

I'm not sure whether to continue with my original plan of going for space or to change the target, cut it short and going for Diplo.

 

[Tone]

Well I think that I've got that out of my system. I can't remember choosing to play the Indians before, I can't remember playing a 5CC at Emperor level and I can't remember going for space on a 5CC at any level. A few firsts for me then; even if Dianthus' #1 slot is safe for now.

Then again, continents 80% is probably not the best choice to make if you want to get the best lauch date.

I'm just glad that I wasn't sharing that small island (continent?) with a Sid opponant.

My scrappy bit of paper tells me that the Hittites are next on the 'Not Very Popular in the HoF' list. What to do with them though?