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Seraiel
You said you played this one 240h. But how much time do you spend doing write-ups?
240h a game... That'd be 30 standard/normal games! (and also total number of all games I've played this year) How come you don't overload? Can you do other stuff like working or studying with the same zeal? If you can, please write a guide. I'd definitely be interested in that. If you take drugs, say which one.
I thought about 2h on how to answer to this. I decided to keep may answer short, be precise and follow my intuition.
- When I play, I play, when I write, I write, there is no in between for me, I can only do one thing properly at a time.
- The time I spend on the Writeup (I guess) is the same as I spend on playing the game, I don't know, I have no feeling about time.
- I prefer playing 1 game, over playing 30 games. 1 game can be 30 games, as 30 can be 1.
- To not overload, humans have "inter-neurons" as I learned, those are the nerves, which make you not hear the ticking of the clock.
- I do everything with the same zeal, but the rule of one at a time counts here. Atm. I'm having semester break.
- I try to not give advice about life, as I once got sucked into a sect like scientology.
- I do take drugs, though no illegal ones anymore, because of the side-effects of those.
If you feel that none of these answers anwer your questions, think about them again, and I strongly suggest using the PN function, as this thread is planned to be a Writeup about a single game of Civ, and not about myself.
I will be so sad when this write up is over. I really enjoy reading it.
I'm glad you do
. Don't be sad, an end is only the beginning.
In "normal" games, when I conquer the first AI and have 15+ cities, I stop caring about micromanaging and workers and just whip out new stuff whenever I think of it. I can't think what would make one micro over 100 cities every turn on Marathon speed...
I also support shakabrades proposal to tell us your secrets on how you can do so much stuff in so little time
"What would make one do this" is your question.
Extreme form of perfectionism and boredom is my guess, but "necessity" is probably the real answer. If you want to get over the 3M, not evaluating again on why I like highscore games, you simply have to micromanage every city every turn, just because the programmers of Civ never thought someone would do this, therefor, programmed the game with stupid algorythms like "stop the growth when the city is reaching its
limit" .
If this was the future, I could talk to my computer like the people in Star Trek, I could say "hire max-merchants in every city. group cities in production and commerce. maximise food, production and commerce in that order" and things like that.
Man, would that be great, and man, would my games get faster. Anyhow, something would be missing, and that is "the way" . In Asia, they program games like AION, where you have to to the same over and over. I haven't experienced any stronger frustration than in the time I was playing that game, anyhow, I learned so much about how to play my character in 2 months, like I didn't in 6y of DAoC.
This is what's called "the grind". When you micro 150+ cities every turn, you will be not making mistakes and feel tremendous fun everytime you are confronted with something else, you will see patterns where there was chaos before, you'll get a system, you'll become fast and precise, you'll learn to do things you never did and think thoughts that never came to you before.
Essence in short: Grind confronts one with onesself.
No kidding?
Gathering posts to be able to write PN's, huh?
Yes!
It is "fire at will". "Fire at free will" would be the command to kill the free will ("Knallt den freien Willen ab"). Considering how much whipping you are doing here that is quite appropriate.
I'm not familiar with Tanya and the game she appears in.
trog
Hmm, have problems on getting that. What does whipping have to do with firing at will? And what is wrong with "the free will", isn't that a common term like it is in german, "the ability to freely decide" ?
Btw., I didn't whip that much in that game, Replay #4 with the weaker Egyptians was a lot worse, in this game, I only took cities to about +5
. I payed huge attention to using the OF of 2 Whips to complete a 3rd building, that I didn't mention in the Writeup, but that would have found its place in the planned strategy guide.
If you wanna see extensive whipping, read
Mylenes game with Isabella, she took her cities to +17
, but anyhow, goals of that game were different.
Tanya --- Red Alert, c'mon...
I had to google. Never really played it except once or twice. I've always been into turn based strategy games like chess or ... civ.
trog
I'm with you, I like to have infinite time to think about my moves, though you'd be amazed how exciting RTS can be. I highly recommend to try the "Generals Challenge" from C&C Generals Zero Hour once, I found it to be as challenging as beating Deity. The game should be available for a handfull of .
It would be even more amusing if he were the Greeks.
Uh, explain, cannot think anymore atm.
Most epic thread ever.
Too bad I will never get within 3.3 million of your score.
Edit: And I play lowly Immortal.
Thx
.
If you want to try, try playing Incans, Marathon and a medium sized map, that should be somewhat the same as playing IMM with a normal leader on normal speed. Having played on Deity once is something I can only recommend everybody to have done, the difference between 20% discount and 40% discount is like playing a different game, not being able to get peace easily supports this feeling. I try to remind myself ot what
WastinTime once said to me, "don't be afraid of AI, AI is pathetic against human" .
troglodyt: Proof-reading Seraiels posts would be doing us all a great disservice, I think. It could threaten his unique voice and style of posting, which I think enrichens the battle reports. OTOH, I might be biased given that my mother tongue is a germanic language. Pity the non-germanic-speaking fools who don't know what a "list" (in the context of battle, or indeed general human interaction) might be
. No, but really - the sometimes strained English does, in my opinion, enhance rather than detract from the reports. I could be a second proof reader to ensure that the first proofreader doesn't suck all the soul out of the reports
. I'm glad that my english can make people laugh, and am happy, that you think that it's unique. All I hope now is, that people are able to understand me at all.
But for self-defense, the "list" I looked up at leo.org (dictionary) , one of the sites that I visit regularly when doing the Writeup, but it fooled me, as it translates in both directions, even if one chose only one! Hard to explain how it fooled me, but that site is troll! Just to correct that mistake, with "list" the engllish word of "deceit" or "fraud" was meant.
Seraiel: Nice work as usual. Some poster mentioned earlier that he didn't expect the Replays to turn out into something this... (and now it's my words) awesome? I must admit I doubted what you were about at the beginning of replays 1 and 2. What you've done since has proven me quite the fool. Your awesome contributions to the forum since then have properly shut my criticisms up. While I'll be surprised if I ever play a sushi game (or ever play a game for the HoF), I've come around to respect both you and the HoF style of play through your writings. It's not for me, but it's valid and amazing and helps bring insight into this old, bugged, idiotic, enganging, hilarious and awesome game that we play.
Thx for the compliments. Achieving respect between the S&T players and the HoF community is truely something that is needed and something I wish for. I think it will still take a lot of work to convince some people to drop their fists, to stop accusing each other, to make a change. I know that neither you nor I am alone, others have already started on playing HoF games while again others have started on shadowing the games of other S&T players.
Personally I must say, that I was very confused when I came to this forum, it said "Strategy and Tips" , so what I expected were more Guides like in the War Academy, I thought people were discussing about "Strategies" and giving "Tips" to each other. The concept of "Shadow-games", games without BUFFY and especially the concept of Spoilers were things I didn't expect.
I was totally surprised when I started the series of Writeups to "get tips" and "learn strategies" from others, when suddenly people said "I think about playing that game" and then gave up because of the settings, saying things like "we recommend using normal settings" , WTH? I'm playing after my own rules, I play with the settings I prefer, I don't expect people to follow me or play my games, yet, they can still read, load the save, and "give Tips" and "talk about strategies", right?
Regarding how old Civ 4 is, I have to say that coming out of the MMORPG-scene I have to admit, that I'm extremely surprised at how many things aren't known about Civ yet. Believe it or not, but in MMO's,
everything is known by the players, even without the existance of a manual, formulas, concepts, encounters, items, for everything there is a cookie-cutter-concept (hope one can understand this) ! Amazing fact is, that the producer of a game says almost nothing about it, knowledge is created by the players and given to the others freely.
In Civ, I was astonished when people didn't seem to know that AIs have "flavours" that make them favour this or that, something I felt AI has after a handful of games, because it was always Pericles who went Education first (think of his favourite civic, and this makes sense) . I guess, looking at what the opponents do is something MMO-players learn.
I joined the Civ community very late, so I missed a lot of developements that had taken place, and the War Academy is somewhat outdated, people have to work on that, as I think this game is still going to live very very long. AI is stupid, no discussion about that, but Civ IV is still one of the most complex games ever created, even my friend BigBossPlayer knew about "a game that's still played by a lot of people after 10y", and got sucked into playing Deity, though he normally only plays Pokemon on easymode
.
Again, keep up the good work
I'm learning a lot, though I'm not patient enough to put all of it into practice. I'm looking forward to the next installment, as well as the strategy guides that you're intending to write. If you'd like a proofreader for *those*, I'd be happy to help
A proofreader for the strategy guides would be awesome, as those may not have any flaws in them. I'm going to send you a friend-request, making the communication easier.
Btw.: Does anybody know about this feature the portal has, "write book page?" If nobody knows, I'm going to PN some Admin on it, looks like there is a function on this site to let people work together on something, just seems like nobody is using it.
Next part going online today!
Sera
) every turn possible. All of them shrunk to like size 3, but the rate they grow back at is linear whilst the rate at which your army increases is huge and the snowball effect of such an army so quickly is crazy!! Your games have been really helpful 
buildings while building Wealth in enough cities so that the units don't go on strike. Anyhow, this constant battle will not be dealt with in the Writeup, it is just mentioned as a sidenote, as I think, that it would be very fatigable for the readers, the name of the episode should be enough.
already, as I put a decent focus on getting the Ressources for it when deciding which islands to settle. It'll go up to 30 
/ turn at 0%, choosing Radio mainly because of it's Wonders giving 
through the power of sheer pop and 2 Spy-cities. This unlocks new options:
