Replay #6 Short Story

[vranasm]

STW, I said bigger than small with a reason .



And that makes the winner of the competetion Sun Tzu Wu if I'm correct! His guess 1000 AD is only 20y from the actuall winning date and there were no other, closer guesses.



You always talk big ZZZ, if you can so easily beat all the HoF players, just do it . I think you're largely underestimating the size of that map and how long medieval wars took.

Sera

I can tell you... in crusader kings 2 the average siege of 1 county is couple of years...

 

[sossos]

I checked the deity HOF games and find an interesting law. The more competition in the same table and the closer between No.1 and No.2, the higher quality the No. 1game is. For example, some of the religious victory made by STW.

There are a lot of cheesy HOF No.1 as there is no rivals in the same table. Some of the No.1 game is even played with future/industrial start. I think a lot of players (like zzz) can easily get the NO.1 position but the HOF problem impedes them to do so.

The problem is that a lot of players don't like map finding and assignated AIs. It makes players bored to play with similar start, similar neighbor, similar tech path. Eventually it is a game and most people just want fun and different tastes.

Maybe there are other reasons, but the truth is: HOF games are not so attractive to most deity players. I didn't see any records from some skillfull deity players like DW.

If you want competition, I think GOTH is better though there is very few deity games. For masochist deity players, I think there could be another GOTH: a random map generated every month at deity level. If the map is too tough, the retiring score can also be submitted.

HOF is still the place for fame, but not for competition, or sufficient competition.

 

[Seraiel]

You're wrong that there is no competition, I heard that WastinTime and Jesusin battled for one specific slot for years! There is also actual competetion for the score-games, WastinTime is currently trying to re-take his slot in highest score from me .

But there are very few players who can play Deity at all, and the number of slots is Huge, and not everybody can / wants to play with locked modified assets and the other harsh rules of HoF.

 

[Revent]

What is lock modified assets anyway?

 

[Manco Capac]

What is lock modified assets anyway?

Anti-cheat lock. And that lock is supposed to be a bit rusted...

 

[Revent]

Anti-cheat lock. And that lock is supposed to be a bit rusted...

How does one cheat in Civ? (other than WB and reloading)

 

[Manco Capac]

I checked the deity HOF games and find an interesting law. The more competition in the same table and the closer between No.1 and No.2, the higher quality the No. 1game is. For example, some of the religious victory made by STW.

Sure, there is no competition below deity. Deity is all, deity deity DIETY.
Beating the crap of a well-played noble game is not a challenge. Because deity is the cream of the cake. Rest is taste of sh-t.

There are a lot of cheesy HOF No.1 as there is no rivals in the same table. Some of the No.1 game is even played with future/industrial start. I think a lot of players (like zzz) can easily get the NO.1 position but the HOF problem impedes them to do so.

Cheesy plays is something that can't be avoided for sure.
But cheesy happens even outside HoF just we can't control the environment at least.
It is a truth there are many low-hanged fruits on deity because most players there are shunned by deity. Simple said. HoF tables are not the place of competition because you have to find the hard slots first. Gauntlets with minimal number of competitors and few experts have its deal of harshness. For instance, each time I see WastinTime contributing to one HoF competition, I know I'll have a hard time.

HoF challenger games are another type of series of games where some cheese are eliminated like huts and events. And the opponents are not necessarily the ones you want!


The problem is that a lot of players don't like map finding and assignated AIs. It makes players bored to play with similar start, similar neighbor, similar tech path. Eventually it is a game and most people just want fun and different tastes.


Challenger series. Again. The purpose of challenger is not to be immortalized in the said table, but to "challenge yourself", especially with annoying neighbours.
It's been a times I haven't played the usual peacemongers, but I like to include one or two once in a while.

Maybe there are other reasons, but the truth is: HOF games are not so attractive to most deity players. I didn't see any records from some skillfull deity players like DW.


Deity players. Yeah. Aryanism....

If you want competition, I think GOTH is better though there is very few deity games. For masochist deity players, I think there could be another GOTH: a random map generated every month at deity level. If the map is too tough, the retiring score can also be submitted.

GOTM sure is a great place to know your place. I've learnt I'm a loser there.
It shouldn't be called anymore GOTM, or WOTM or BOTM, but DGOTM!



HOF is still the place for fame, but not for competition, or sufficient competition.

To quote my dear friend Obsolete, the other side of the forum [stinks @ss!].

Comments in blue.

In résumé, in human-human competitions, deity or not doesn't matter. All difficulty are hard if the competitors are top-notched. Indeed, a deity player often knows a lot on how to play and twists of strategies, explaining why their success rate are quite often superior!

 

[Manco Capac]

How does one cheat in Civ? (other than WB and reloading)

BUFFY mods included a serie of verifiers against reloading by comparing (I think) some kind of temporaries saves and the present one. If all those saves don't dovetail in term of actions done, then reloading AND modification was done...often for a malicious intent.

WB is common mean to cheat and if it was enforced, then one would add just one more unit at the right moment without anyone noticing.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Note that both the HoF and xOTM have used the same "honesty verification" modules for many years (example: BUFFY for Beyond the Sword). Sure these aren't infallible, just as the best encryption codes aren't technically infallible either. The fact that both the HoF and xOTM continue to use these "honesty verification" modules "proves" their effectiveness.

BTW, when a HoF game is disallowed, it is often the result of innocent replaying of a turn; presumbly via continuing the game from a slightly older game save by mistake. Of course some save game discrepencies may be be actual attempts at cheating. However, the module does not detect the "intention" to cheat; it can only detect a break in the chain of trust; it can' t detect that the break was intentional.

These modules also actually prevent the use of World Builder.

I understand that many players consider use of these modules as personal affront to their honesty. In my opinion, a few such players (maybe more) simply can't imagine NOT replaying to "correct" a 95-99 percent combat loss or even using World Builder to tone down an AI opponent to be less formible than they are certain they should have been. Indeed, the indignation that some players show when it is suggested that they use these modules hints that they may not be as scrupilously honest as they would like to be seen. Enough (too much; more than I intended) said on this topic.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[vranasm]

well I don't have many obliges against BUFFY, but from what I got it is perceived to be a bit slower (more processor intensive) then vanilla game...especially in late game.

what I would have liked if the HOF staff would continue with BUFFY development...stability, performance, maybe some bugs are all things that could and most probably should be fixed.

I think BUFFY (and slightly BUG mod) are the only thing aside from Firaxis that can better stability and performance of the game.

the HOF audience is big enough imo.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I checked the deity HOF games and find an interesting law. The more competition in the same table and the closer between No.1 and No.2, the higher quality the No. 1game is. For example, some of the religious victory made by STW.

There are a lot of cheesy HOF No.1 as there is no rivals in the same table. Some of the No.1 game is even played with future/industrial start. I think a lot of players (like zzz) can easily get the NO.1 position but the HOF problem impedes them to do so.

The problem is that a lot of players don't like map finding and assignated AIs. It makes players bored to play with similar start, similar neighbor, similar tech path. Eventually it is a game and most people just want fun and different tastes.

Maybe there are other reasons, but the truth is: HOF games are not so attractive to most deity players. I didn't see any records from some skillfull deity players like DW.

If you want competition, I think GOTH is better though there is very few deity games. For masochist deity players, I think there could be another GOTH: a random map generated every month at deity level. If the map is too tough, the retiring score can also be submitted.

HOF is still the place for fame, but not for competition, or sufficient competition.

Nearly everything you said about the HoF is true. However, occasionally when the #1 game in a slot is far better than the #2, the #1 game can be of such an extremely high quality that it 100% deters any addional attempts by other players to gain the #1 slot in that table. Take for example, the Deity Space Colony Marathon Large and Standard slots; Ironhead's two #1 games there are so much better than anyone else's attempts that it deters any further attempts by anyone else.

About six months from the first release of Civ 5, the Civ 4 HoF still had a hundred or so empty tables. So a few players, lead by cabert made it their goal to complete a game in each empty table. They did so, even if it meant using a Future Era starts and possibly ICBMs an Tactical Nukes (BtS). They finished before Civ 5 was released as I recall.

There still are a few highly contested Deity HoF slots. If one does want competition in a HoF slot, either get it picked to match a HoF Gauntlet or announce on the HoF Update thread that you would like competition for a particular slot; preferably one with a weak #1 game, so the best player competing is ensured a new #1 slot as opposed to fighting over the #2 slot.

I don't believe that xOTH is a better place for competition either. Not only are Deity xOTH relatively rare, you only get one chance to play and must thus stay on the conservative edge. One must choose a Victory Condition and this splits the competition into Conquest, Domination, Cultural, Diplomatic, Space Race/Space Colony, Time? and Religious Leader Diplomatic and further yet between Earliest and Score games.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Ozbenno]

I don't think that the number of turns means anything, but maybe Ozbenno, SunTzuWu or WastinTime can tell us? The version doesn't matter either if I'm informed correctly, which I find a little odd, but I can understand the reasoning behind that.

Sorry only just seen this.

Number of turns in the game is irrelevant, only the finish date is considered for the ranking of a HOF game (excluding score of course).

Version doesn't matter except for space, where Vanilla and Warlords are considered seperately than Beyong the Sword (because of the requirement to wait turns from launch in BtS).

 

[troglodyt]

Nice as usual. One question: Have you done the maths on building pyramids and running police state vs. the way you played? I really like early police state in marathon games.

 

[coanda]

Nice as usual. One question: Have you done the maths on building pyramids and running police state vs. the way you played? I really like early police state in marathon games.

To put it simply... you don't build Pyramids for Police State.

Let's consider. A catapult should be 100 and a Praetorian 90; Pyramids should be 1500.

So with stone (which was available this game at a reasonably good city site, although not the easiest spot to get hooked up), you pay 750 for Pyramids. Then your cities get +25% military unit production, which means they only need make 80 for a catapult and 72 for a praetorian. This means they're saving 20 per catapult and 18 per praet. So you'd have to build about 40 praets/cats to break even; obviously not a rushing strategy.

But if you aren't rushing, the bulk of your military buildup is going to come from your production cities, who will at least have Forges if not Heroic Epic boosting military unit production. So in those cities, you pay about 67 hammers per catapult and 60 hammers per praet as opposed to 80 and 72, so you're saving 13 hammers per catapult and 12 hammers per praet. Not all of your production will come from those cities of course, so let's call it a nice even 15% reduction in costs.

If you look back a few pages you'll see the total army Seraeil had built by the end of his first major praet war, discounting any handful of hammers he may have spent on warriors. 30 praets, 3 maces, 1 pike, 18 catapults, and 2 trebuchets, for a total of 5360 spent. 15% of that would be 804 hammers, so if he'd grabbed stone early, built Pyramids, and been in Police State the entire time, by the end of his major (game-deciding) war he'd have saved about 50 hammers.

However, that's not really a fair way of looking at it - because spending that 250 on Pyramids, plus choosing to settle the stone site, would have slowed down his expansion; if it put him just 10 turns back on getting a city, that would in turn mean that city hit happy cap 10 turns later, meaning 10 fewer turns producing at happy cap; it would also mean the next city after that one would be pushed back 10 turns (at least), and so forth. All told, he would likely have lost well over a hundred citizen-turns by the time he actually attacked, so instead of saving a couple dozen hammers he'd have lost several hundred hammers.

But that's also not a fair way of looking at it, because having Pyramids going forward in the game is a definite plus - it'll help with future military build-ups, or you can swap to Rep. for a big kick to your tech rate, so it'd be worth losing at least some hammers to get that.

This was a fairly favorable situation you can get for Police State from Pyramids - stone available, using a moderately large army for a late Classical / early Medieval timing push; only way it could have been better was if he'd been IND too, or if stone was closer in to his capital.

So... Pyramids for Police State, not really worth it. Spending some time in Police State, provided you have Pyramids, can be worth it... but you get Pyramids for Representation, or a mix of Police State and Rep. Not just for Police State.

In this game, I think he made the right call to not get it. If you get a particularly friendly start (like stone in capital or natural second city site, plenty of forests, and your first couple cities naturally block off good land to expand into so you don't risk losing spots to the AIs), it could be worthwhile. Or, obviously, if you can make good use of Representation on your start, and have stone.

 

[troglodyt]

^^
Thx for the calculation. The main reason I've built the mids has always been rep. But for early military build-up (with a Spiritual leader that is) my gut feeling was that police state is a tremendous help especially without forges.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

^^
Thx for the calculation. The main reason I've built the mids has always been rep. But for early military build-up (with a Spiritual leader that is) my gut feeling was that police state is a tremendous help especially without forges.

Capturing The Pyramids is usually a cheaper strategy than building it, but it can be hard to decide whether capturing the city with The Pyramids is a better option than a tactically easier city to capture.

Another Great Wonder to capture is Stonehenge for slow border pops.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

... so here is the next guessing competition: You guess the date in which I won the round and by winning you may either choose the game-speed of my next game, or the starting era, or the map-size or the Civ again!

After careful deliberation for three weeks (sorry about that), I'd like Seriel to please play a Quick speed game next.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Seraiel]

Hi again

As some know already, I'm back from my hiatus. What brought me back, were the amazing people I got to know as friends in these forums, but also the promise I made to Revent and simply the great game that CIV is.

Looking at what I left here, it seems, I even got one more promise to fulfil towards SunTzuWu, who wished, that I'd play a 'quick' game. That game I played already some time ago, and as you know me, I take saves about every thought I and every decision I make in my games, I actually just looked in my Civ-Savegames-Folder and found that I have an amazing 10 GB (!) of Civ-Savegames, so this shouldn't be too difficult right?

I didn't even forgot about my ambitions to become a Deity Elite Quattromaster once, so I'm already playing the game after the quick game that SunTzuWu wished for, so it seems, I have some catching up to do .

The help-smiley btw is fun, as I found out in my current round, is, that even though I took a long break, my game is on a whole new lvl now, I never was better than I am right this moment, so join my journey, and lets advance from a Deity Conquest game with the Romans, to a Deity Cultural game with Ghandi and then see if my statement, that I'm on a new lvl, is right, if I should be happy that my skills didn't diminish too much, or, if I forgot the things that always can happen in a round on Deity? Maybe you'll even see me getting but I'm gonna and the out of AI anyway ?

Let's rock !​

380 BC: Willem is dead, leaving 5 cities to the Roman empire, one of them having the Mids. The empire is in a good diplomatic situation, the christians are strong, but the Romans themselves are on one of the rear places.



Roman Solution to the problem: Praets!



Further problem: To little Siege. Roman Solution: Cities that are larger than size 1 and: The Whip!



Nice Fact: Because of the Forges I built in most cities, and because of having the Mids and running Police State, Vassalage + Theocracy, every whip accounts for 135 . Trebuchets cost 160 each, so I can 2pop whip one, and get the 2nd one via the large overflow. The new units have either 7 XP, so can be double promoted (normal city with Barracks) or are amazing 11 XP Monsters that can be promoted to the utterly frightening CR3 directly (HE-city still having the 2 settled GG's) .

This is a picture of my military a good 20 turns after Willems death (160 BC) :



And this is the chosen target:



Hatty has the same technological lvl, regarding her military, and she also has an equal number of cities (12) . I'm amazed myself when looking at the number of units I built and the enormous size, each empire has on this huge map, now that I have the comparison from my current game, which plays on a small map. I'm much more daring now, and with full honesty, I cannot understand myself, what I did in this game, I mean, seriously? A military of 50 units at 160 BC and I've only conquered 1 Civ already?!? Unbelievable, that this game would get #1 (and even hold that place in HoF 'til now ) .

Here is the plan I had at that time: Keep the whole world in war all the time, build as much military as possible, and then steamroll one empire after another. Here are Screenshots from the opposition I encounter in Hattys first cities:



Right, so for those handful of units I waited until I had 30+ offensive units (not counting the necessary Siege for Chicken Pizza Hatty) ? It's gonna get harder in the further cities, isn't it?

The next city:



Ok, ok, now to get this right one time: Dimensions on huge maps are simply different to the standard maps, most of you play. Anyhow, I still find, I was too much Chicken at that time, and that I could have attacked a lot earlier, with a lot less troops, and I think I don't have to let you wait that long, because you already know what will happen next, I'm gonna conquer Hatty's complete empire, the question is, what is the question (fun, google the german rave band scooter to get that one) ?

The question is, how many losses am I gonna have and how long is it going to take?

1. 240 AD.
2. 4 Praetorians, 2 Macemen, 1 Pikeman, 4 Catapults, 13 Trebuchets.

And believe it or not, but with the loss of those little troops, I conquered all of Hatty's 13 cities and killed 6 Swordsmen, 4 Axemen, 28 Macemen (yes! CR2 or 3 Praets with Trebuchet Support easily kill the largely more expensive Macemen) , 8 Pikemen, 21 Longbowmen, 14 Knights (yes, Praets even kill Knights...) , 3 War Elephants, 2 Horse Archers, 25 Catapults, 1 Trebuchet and 1 Scout ( ) , and amazingly enough, but Hatty didn't have a single War Chariot.

This accounts to 113 units killed at 24 units lost, so 1 Praet killed about 20 units, and it took Hatty about 10 units, to kill 1 Trebuchet.

I'll leave you alone with a series of pictures, that should leave you in a good place:

The Roman Empire (screen from high above) :



The roman core cities:



Ravenna (GP-Farm) , Antium (Centre of Research) and Rome (Capital) : Choose where you wanna be:



A Great General:



The Graphs, showing the developement:



---------------

Sera

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Thanks for resuming your write-up! They are always well written and a joy to read. Always something new to learn too.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Killroyan]

Love your stories Seraiel. Keep up the good work. Incredible play for me so far.