RBC14A - Age of Discovery - Portugal, Sid

[Arathorn]

It ended up being so easy because it IS so easy, so long as you can avoid getting overrun. The AI is very bad at prioritizing treasure delivery (true in Middle Ages conquest, too, just less noticeable there). As long as the human gets treasure-producing cities set up and going reasonably early and doesn't completely neglect the sea, the human will win.

Great scenario concept and some fun units, but the AI just doesn't seem equal to the task. Disappointing in a way.

Anyway, thanks to the team! Big kudoes to Jabah for surviving the roughest turns. And thanks to T-hawk for setting it up, running it, and finishing it off. I think you're right about Cueta serving approximately the same purpose, difficulty-wise, as our cities in Portugal.

Arathorn

 

[T-hawk]

Yes, the scenario is easy. I think the AI isn't all that bad at returning treasures; it's worse at producing the treasures in the first place. We had five mines rushed the instant we got Mining tech. The AIs don't know to do that - they don't know to road the resources ahead of time, and can't consider building the mine until the resource is actually connected.

Another cause of easiness is that the AIs don't build any more Privateers at all once they get frigates. They always go for the highest attack value when building offensive units. I saw no Privateers on my turn at all. They're supposed to make shipping dangerous, but we could do it perfectly safely.

The AIs were nowhere near cultural victory. I remember checking the Top 5 Cities list, and #2 was Madrid! Only the Aztec capital was higher, and I think it was around 1600 culture when I checked the victory status screen. Civ-wide was around 6K for someone, the Inca I think.

That's not to say we didn't play well. The Africa grab was key. With Portugal's explosive start (Golden Age, Dias' Voyage, and the island cities), we grabbed all that land uncontested, and getting the Colonial Capital built fast kept our economy right up there. Thanks to Gobi Bear for pointing us to Portugal.

Good game again, all!

 

[romeothemonk]

I played a solo sid game as portugal and followed your basic ideas. Actually I almost always played portugal the same way, just never on that high of difficulty.
The Cheap Protestantism and Early revolt helped a lot.
I Declared a first turn war on the Dutch and bought everyone in. Europe burned for 30+ turns and the dutch only lost 1 city.
Spain, on abut turm 60 sneak attacked me as well, even though I fed them luxuries. After watching your game, I had 4 defenders around. Lisbon fell, but Oporto held, and I dogpiled all the Euro's against Spain and held Oporto for 30 turns.
For Research rather than 2-fer the way you guys did, I just stole tech and then traded.
You guys played a nice game, and I think that Spain just declares war on Portugal around turn 60 on Sid regardless of the conditions. A full scale sid attack is brutal, kudo's on surviving.
Oh Yeah and I won too