Prince Zara in the corner

[elitetroops]

Playing this, up to the 19th century so far. Interesting.

Very interested in hearing more about the game! Let us know how it goes!

 

[reddishrecue]

There's another final frontier other than the regular final frontier one? What is the future of civ IV coming to?

 

[aitkensam]

I also clicked end turn a couple of hundred times yesterday.

Spoiler :

Oracled Currency. Built GLib. Popped some GSs. Met 4-5 AIs (inc. Mansa) pre-Physics. Libbed Physics. Built airship. Met other 2AIs and seemed like UN would be hard because of Hindu lovefest and people peace vassaling to Asoka.

Decided to tech towards Paratroopers cos military victory seemed the coolest option. Got to them around 1860AD... slow... One AI has Infantry, one rifling, others chemistry or nothing. Sadly the most attackable AIs are the least logistics friendly.

Don't have the motivation to carry on. Unit movement so tiring... Maybe UN would have been possible. Some people broke free and also free religion by some AI might make it possible.

Saves are at Lib - possibly could go towards UN victory - and Flight - for military victory attempt. (Didn't do much/any thinking about how many towns/mines to keep so these dates can surely be vastly improved upon and make victory easier).

 

[elitetroops]

Yup, this is a tough one... My attempt:

Spoiler :

Settled 1N as I figured I wouldn't be able to work the entire BFC anyway and maybe I could culture flip something with a city by the lake.

Early techpath AH->Pot->Wri->BW->Monarchy->CoL->(bulb math)->Oracle CS. BW was probably unnecessary that early.

Spoiler :

A few turns later I met the first AI.

Spoiler :

Next up was Great Library, then I saw Vicky settling a city 3 tiles south of the lake, so I went music next and settled and culture bombed my 2nd city, hoping to culture flip Nottingham. It looked good at first, I quickly got up to 30% culture on the city tile. But then it stagnated. I basically wasted my 2nd city entirely on this effort, building library, monastery and stele, then culture for a long time, but it didn't help. Even after I got the 4th border pop at 5000 culture I couldn't get more than 30% on the city tile in Nottingham. It never flipped.

I should have waited with settling the city until she had cleared the jungle and improved pigs south of lake. I could have easily stolen that tile and this would have made the city a lot better.

Libbed Physics, could have been a lot earlier here if I had done something more useful in 2nd city than building culture and used the GA from music on a Golden Age instead of the worthless culture bomb...

Spoiler :

By this time it was clear than being first to Mass Media and building UN is no problem, but getting the votes is.

Shaka was crushing Asoka, despite Asoka having longbows, maces, knights and pikes while Shaka had nothing better than pults and phants. I feared Asoka vassalling to Shaka, so I started gifting him airships. After giving him 6-7 airships, he managed to take one of his cities back (he had lost his core by this time) and eventually made peace. It was looking good, as it appeared I would run against Shaka in the elections and getting the other votes was easy. But then they went to war again and this time Asoka bribed in Hatty. Hatty quickly took a few cities of Shaka to become the largest civ on the map and I knew UN was pretty much a lost cause. I still got elected secretary general, but before the first vote, Mansa peace vassalled to Hatty and the game was definitely over. Getting Shaka's votes without getting -4 "you traded with our worst enemy" with the rest of the world would be impossible.

The map is for sure winnable, but you need some luck with how the diplo situation develops, in case you are going for UN win. There's not much you can do to influence it early in the game. I didn't meet Shaka until a few turns before getting Physics, otherwise I might have bribed the whole world on him for the shared war bonus. But by the time I met him, he was too big and the world feared his military might.

Flipping a city south of the lake might be possible. Maybe if you go caste and produce another Great Artist for another culture bomb. If you manage to flip a city, that would really help a lot. After that anything would be possible.

I'm now thinking that settle 1NE and building 3 cities is best. With trade routes the extra city is a net gain no matter how bad it is.

 

[aitkensam]

Gave this another go with the 3 city setup and aiming for paratrooper break out. It's pretty fun as the game progresses fast with so little micro! Up to 1870AD.

Spoiler :

Oracled CS in 950BC via Monarchy, founding Confucianism and with 1st GS for academy - bit risky but I figured it was worth a go on Prince and might make later game easier.

Teched Alpha and Lit then towards Education, backfilling whatever I needed. Built Glib 250BC/NE 100AD Got really unlucky with Great People. Think I got 3GPs in a row with 80-20 chance for GS/GP.

Settled 3rd city after Victoria improved pig, but before the mines. Was thinking about flipping city, but after playing on for a bit I think flipping will be really hard on this map. Gave up quite quickly on that, still built some useless culture buildings though...

Barb city popped up to the east and broke TRs for quite a while. Very annoying cos I lost all health trades!

Libbed Physics (1240AD). My cities ended up sizes 12(cap),7(south),1(west). Shrank down the western city after it had worked some cottages up to towns. Research maxed out at just over 500bpt with rep/bur/caste/fm/pac.

1808AD Shaka DoW Asoka. Status now was Shaka (12) master of Hannibal (4). Asoka (12) with Mansa (5) and Hatty (1) as peace vassals. Vicky (5), Hammy (5). I DoWd Shaka too (after a request).

1818AD Flight, Fascism, Rifling all in. Only Mansa had rifles. Started building units, but didn't destroy towns immediately as I wanted to get to Industrialism for tanks.

1840AD world turned peaceful after Shaka took 3 Asoka cities inc. Delhi, and Asoka took 1 from Hannibal.

1844AD Beg 1 gold from Asoka. DoW Vicky. Take 3 cities.

1862AD AP vote comes up for peace with Vicky on same turn she will cap. Took the cap rather than defy as happiness is a problem...

Now it's 1870AD. 6 cities. 3 usable. Industrialism in. Tech lead. 1 airport. 9 paratroopers. 2/5 of top power. No Oil yet, but should be able to gift Vicky combustion and pay for hers. 3 AI (Asoka's team) can tech Assembly Line.

Keeping on building paras for now. Will switch to tanks when possible and DoW Asoka as soon as seems feasible... hopefully...

Oh and Shaka is plotting, but we had peace deal when he started so I think it can't be on me. In a perfect world he DoWs Hammy then I'll bribe Asoka on him and then back stab Asoka. Then maybe Mansa can do me a favour and break free!

Sleep for now though...

 

[Izuul]

Elite's game just made me think of a way to possibly get out of the box here. I believe everything would have to align correctly for this to work, but i was recently reminded in another thread of a mechanic which causes an AI to gift a city to you. The mechanics of this are detailed in this post by the legendary DanF.

So this would be the idea:

1) Settle 1N as Elite did
2) Build a settler but do not settle city yet - we want to leave tiles outside of our culture for Lizzy to settle a rice + pigs city
3) Generate a great artist - Music would be best bet
4) When Lizzy settles her city, settle the lake city and GA bomb it. Might have to settle it exactly 3N of her city which would mean on the hill, but that's OK. This should grab 10 of her BFC tiles unless London has more culture on a couple than our artist produced.
5) 4T later Lizzy gifts us the city

The one hitch here is whether or not the English city is close enough to our capitol to be liberated. I am unsure on the mechanics of that part, but the rest should work in theory.

 

[Izuul]

Well i attempted the strategy outlined above and my report is mixed.

Spoiler :

Early stuff isn't entirely relevant to what i was trying to do, but i did go AH > Writing for fast library and GS for Academy. I then went for Pottery (questionable decision maybe) and after that straight to Monarchy for HR while unlocking the Oracle on the way. Finally i teched CoL and Math for CS Oracle just after 1000 BC. You could get a CS Oracle a lot faster skipping other stuff, but i didn't see any reason to do that on Prince.

Spoiler :

Now for the interesting stuff...

I got the Music GA as planned and he joined my settler on the grass hill.

Spoiler :

Shortly after that Lizzy settled the rice + pigs site and i made contact with her instantly when she settled the city.

Spoiler :

I settled my city and bombed it with the artist and the culture swamped Nottingham as planned.

Spoiler :

Unfortunately when checking the diplo screen the liberate option was not there on Nottingham I suppose this means that my capitol was too far away and that this would only work if the capitol was settled near the lake instead of a 2nd city.

Spoiler :

However, the culture was enough to flip the city in short order so while i did not achieve this the way i intended to it still kind of worked!

Spoiler :

If i get around to finishing this i intend to try to conquer the world. It is annoying though that even with a city on the outside there's still no way to move units between them. It's almost like starting over from T0 on the outside but with advanced techs.

 

[pigswill]

@Izzul.

Spoiler :

If you settle a city NW of Nottingham then build a fort 1W of rice you should be able to get galleys into the 3tile lake.For that matter you might be able to build 2 forts west of rice and pigs and save a city.

 

[Izuul]

Oh good point.

Spoiler :

Indeed Nottingham should be able to build galleys and then forts 1N and 2N of the city will allow boats to pass.

It's going to be quite a long process with 12T needed for worker and then jungle to clear off the food sources + forts take forever to build, but that should do the trick and result in 3 pretty solid cities.

Edit: There seems to be a snag.

Spoiler :

Can build WBs but not galleys (i do have Sailing). I think any body of water with a seafood resource will allow WBs to be constructed. I seem to recall a certain # of water tiles is required for galleys, but i would've thought this would qualify.

It seems maybe 20 water tiles is required for naval units, so this would indeed be too small.

 

[elitetroops]

Impressive efforts!

@aitkensam:

Spoiler :

Did you consider parabombers? I think it is even faster than tanks and should be very effective on this level. Paratroopers can usually jump to the next city while bombers do bombing raids and air strikes to soften up the defenses.

@Izuul:

Spoiler :

I think liberation is only possible to the civ with the closest capital. Nottingham would be within reach for liberation, but London is much closer than your capital.

But very nice job with the culture flipping! The fort idea is great! With those in place, it should not be too hard to beat this map.

 

[(Pro)Peanut_P]

I'm pretty sure it has to be at the least, 20 lake tiles for naval units and 10+ for a lighthouse.

 

[Izuul]

Yep, it is 20. I tested to confirm. This lake is 13 tiles so no bueno.

 

[rah]

Thanks guys for this thread, it has raised some interesting points.
And the creativity here never ceases to amaze me.

 

[pigswill]

Maybe look to culture flip English city while building pyramids then run US to rushbuy a stack.

I've given up on my version. Went for three cities, built pyramids and Glib, even at 400bpt in 1850 I was getting out teched by the AI (and obviously massively out produced).

 

[Hollow Bow]

So zara got out of his corner ? God damn you CIVforums !

@Izuul and elitetroops

Spoiler :

When I saw elitetroops attempt it came to my mind he should've settled on the hlll 2S, 1E instead of just 2S if he wanted to flip the english city, like Izuul did; not saying that would've been what was missing in his attempt, but I remember reading a writeup of someone that had as a houserule to win a map ONLY by culture flipping, and one of the key things was that culture spreads less powerfully diagonally than in a straight line. I'm using this principle in my IU game to get a certain tile I want, the difference is quite noticeable.

I was gonna try this but I was weak couldn't resist the spoilers. great post Elitetroops !

 

[elitetroops]

@Hollow Bow

Spoiler :

That's a good point. Cultural pressure is probably more powerful in a straight line. But I think the main difference between Izuul's and my attempt was that he had the settler and Great Artist immediately in place when the city was settled. As I met the first AI t87, I didn't expect anyone to settle that close so fast and I wasn't ready with my settler and Artist, which gave Vicky time to start producing culture herself.

 

[Izuul]

I had an advantage because it was my 2nd time playing the map. I settled one city the first time and took Electricity with Lib on the way to UN, but i got bored with that one and was more interested in trying to find a way out of the prison.

 

[Tatran]

Turn 255; a revolt in the English city of Hastings on the iron resource.
Turn 500; Hastings is still owned by Victoria. Sigh.

Spoiler :

 

[Tatran]

And finally...Zara wins.

Spoiler :

To found the second city at the right moment was the best hint
and you need some luck with flipping that English city at the other side of the lake.

 

[elitetroops]

We have a winner!

Very well done! I didn't even consider AP, but that was because of being stuck behind the mountains. If you get out and can spread religions it makes a lot of sense!

So the unbeatable map still hasn't been found!