Sampsa's Huge/Epic/Deity/NTT/novassals (+no fail gold)

sampsa

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Well... I got baited. And the answer to the title of the thread is:
Spoiler :
HOLKAN


huge/epic/deity/NTT/novassals (+no fail gold) T115
Spoiler :
Chose Pacal, because I think FIN is boosted under these settings and Pacal has a decent early game. Of course so do several others and I'm not saying Pacal is the easiest anyway.

First game I rolled. A decent start for sure, 2:hammers:-cc tile to settle on without losing a turn and nomnom gems, but that's where the good news end. Unconnected 2nd city, no :food: in 3rd and 4th city... At least there is nice river and lots of chops. Just got the academy, which I think is pretty good under these settings, even if it is antisynergistic with cat attacks and suffers from no fail gold. There is pillage/conquest gold, at least! Purple beast to the east is still cautious (and I'm a land target!), but should go up to pleased very quickly. Zara declared T108 on Liz, Monty has been plotting on her (I think) for 40T, so my war target seems clear. Oh and the war will be started with cats+holkans, maybe adding elephants later (Isabella has them for trade). Also Naps to the south is super weak. Things look dandy to me, but of course it can go wrong.

Civ4ScreenShot0002.JPG


Save attached, it's BUFFY.
 

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huge/epic/deity/NTT/novassals (+no fail gold) T115

How do you enforce "no fail gold" anyway? I don't remember that being an option.

Spoiler :
Chose Pacal, because I think FIN is boosted under these settings and Pacal has a decent early game. Of course so do several others and I'm not saying Pacal is the easiest anyway.

First game I rolled. A decent start for sure, 2:hammers:-cc tile to settle on without losing a turn and nomnom gems, but that's where the good news end. Unconnected 2nd city, no :food: in 3rd and 4th city... At least there is nice river and lots of chops. Just got the academy, which I think is pretty good under these settings, even if it is antisynergistic with cat attacks and suffers from no fail gold.
Spoiler :

By "the academy" do you mean the Great Scientist building, +50% to bulbs? I'm confused by "suffers from no fail gold"?

Cause if you did I'd like to know how you got a GS by T115 (Epic), seems fast.

Save attached, it's BUFFY.
 
How do you enforce "no fail gold" anyway? I don't remember that being an option.
Self imposed. Don't put any :hammers: towards a wonder you are not intending to finish. I think it's allowed to make a run for say GLib and lose it.
Spoiler :

By "the academy" do you mean the Great Scientist building, +50% to bulbs? I'm confused by "suffers from no fail gold"?

Cause if you did I'd like to know how you got a GS by T115 (Epic), seems fast.
Yes, academy, built by a GS. It suffers from no fail gold, because fail gold helps you keep the :science:-slider at 100%. With an academy you want to be at max slider as much as you can.

Well it is pretty fast, but nothing insane. In 2nd city stored some overflow (worker whip), then released it towards library when writing was in (early thanks to gems), then 2-pop whip. Not so hard with double corn.
 
Those are very arbitrary and self imposed settings, as pointed out to you a dozen times already. Perm alliances is a joke, right? Add marathon for extra giggles and call it "most difficult settings which permit victory".


But so does a relatively skilled human player. There shouldn't be much issue to quickly explode from 8 cities to 30 cities on marathon.
Distance to Palace costs.
 
Well, don't do things you cannot afford. Cottages, courthouses, build wealth, the usual.
 
Self imposed. Don't put any :hammers: towards a wonder you are not intending to finish. I think it's allowed to make a run for say GLib and lose it.
Spoiler :


Yes, academy, built by a GS. It suffers from no fail gold, because fail gold helps you keep the :science:-slider at 100%. With an academy you want to be at max slider as much as you can.

Well it is pretty fast, but nothing insane. In 2nd city stored some overflow (worker whip), then released it towards library when writing was in (early thanks to gems), then 2-pop whip. Not so hard with double corn.
Basically this. Common wonders that you may try to get, and fail, are the oracle, parth, gl, If it happens it happens.

The real issue is when someone chops the mids in 6-7 cities, and then let's them all fail. You can out tech deity ai's in NTT if this is allowed on HUge Marathon.
 
Maintenance plateaus off around 20 cities, past that basically every city will be profitable

I'm actually going to try Organized+Imperialist as Sumeria, or Holy Rome with a marble start to oracle CoL for teh Rathaus, might be be doable. I predict I still die on Deity in the Reinassiace.
 
You can out tech deity ai's in NTT if this is allowed on HUge Marathon.
You can out tech them also by building cottages. Just watch me, a mediocre deity player do that. Watch that Lain game. I don't understand what you don't understand. You are massively overvaluing fail gold.
 
I can't find the link in this thread, can you please post it? Sorry if I'm just being dense, but I went so far as to search all your recent posts. :crazyeye:

Worth a read.
 
T175 (25AD)
Spoiler :
Got Nottingham and London from Liz, then Nappy backstabbed me so went for him next. I did this all without any strategic resources, just cat+holkan+archer. And it did suck, yes, but it's doable, though I did suffer a lot of casualties. Everything would've been so much easier with any strat res, so maybe I should've just gone IW earlier. Didn't even have anything to give to Isabella for ivory. Went for music which I guess is nice long term, but immediately gave nothing. Lost GLib (wee fail:gold:) :high5: have HE up.

My inexperience with these settings caused me to make some mistakes. Gifted the spy city to Naps to steal IW and currency soon after, but the mission failed. Now Isabella will capture the spy city. Oops. Well, need to steal from her then, probably will get more stuff anyway. Monty is getting pounded by everyone, so I'll either join or try to take Liz. Will finish Nappy first though.

It shouldn't be hopeless, but the game threatening AI:s are located in corners building up and I'm in the middle fighting for oxygene...

Civ4ScreenShot0003.JPG

 

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T227 (805AD)
Spoiler :
Joao took out HC, I took out Nappy, Justinian was eliminating Toku. I was trying to use the spy city, but it's not very effective after she has :culture: there. Also, spying is not exactly why I built the academy... My army is crap, but should be good enough vs Liz.

Civ4ScreenShot0006.JPG


Soon everyone was suddenly at war with Monty, so I jumped in and got two pretty nice cities and lots of :gold: from pillaging and some from conquest. Was still stealing techs, trying to get to engineering at least.

Civ4ScreenShot0005.JPG


Time to finish off Liz and maybe just chill then and tech/steal towards cannons. I still haven't launched the golden age, and working on next :gp: in the NE-city. Strategically it's been a mess, I have no idea WTH I am trying to achieve, doing a bit of this and a bit of that... Still, I think things look good. I'm soon at 15 cities and some weak civs (Zara, Biz, Sury) are near. By now it's very clear that these settings are beatable, probably close to 100% rate with strong play.

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Fun game. I much prefer Civ 4 with these settings (well, I'd go for Normal over Epic, and generally avoid Espionage, but eh).
 
I agree, it's kinda fun, but such a slog. I'll try to play on anyway...

What I hadn't thought about is how NTT alters AI vs AI wars (and no vassals to some extent, and slower speed to some extent). They can't buy peace so the stronger side just keeps on rolling. I don't (yet) believe this is a massive problem for the human player though. Yes you need to deal with AI stacks of 200 units or so later, but they can be dealt with.
 
I agree, it's kinda fun, but such a slog. I'll try to play on anyway...

What I hadn't thought about is how NTT alters AI vs AI wars (and no vassals to some extent, and slower speed to some extent). They can't buy peace so the stronger side just keeps on rolling. I don't (yet) believe this is a massive problem for the human player though. Yes you need to deal with AI stacks of 200 units or so later, but they can be dealt with.
Hours of your life will vanish on these settings. One pic of yours all the AI have red fists by their names. You do get some insane stacks but if the AI are busy destroying eachother you can likely ignore their stacks. As you suggest getting peace becomes a lot harder. Once you are up to 30-40 cities when should get easier.

Have you considered any strategies to help unit movements. I think you can set up rally points. Plus queue builds using alt key so you don't need to keep micro builds.
 
I’m enjoying reading this and it’s nice to get a sense for these settings without having to endure the slog of playing them myself!

I’m slightly surprised you think that these settings should be beatable close to 100% of the time with strong play (autocorrect changed beatable to bearable which I’m sure you’d never say!) My impression - admittedly based on limited experience - is that luck plays a bigger role with these sorts of settings.

The diplo is really hard to control with so many AI and no ability to gift techs. Most games won’t see an AI march across the map to attack you because there’ll be three or four other civs they like less but it’ll happen more often than on a normal size map.

It’s also probably harder to deal with than on a normal map where at least you can start to monitor cautious Capac’s stack - once you see the red fist - even if you’re pretty sure he’s going for someone else. It’s not feasible to do that with so many AI.

As an aside, the chaotic diplo is one of the big reasons why these settings don’t appeal. NTT makes it even worse because you hardly ever interact with the AI other than to declare war. The game loses one of its most satisfying elements in managing the diplo and feels somehow less dynamic with less need to even check what’s going on with the AI. I’d also feel like rushing someone every game because I’d want an army just in case.

Other elements that add to the randomness are the barbs, the sometimes very unequal resource distribution on bigger map scripts and how AI wars end - does Mansa give Justinian gold or a city for peace or does he stubbornly allow him to slowly take all eleven of his cities. There’s little you can do to influence this without tech trading.

I don’t think these settings really reward longer term strategy and more your ability to react to opportunities presented by the chaos. It still requires skill - and I can’t really comment on whether it’s more or less skill - but different skills.
 
I think handpicked starts are 90% or so :)
What Sampsa plays (middle of the map start, first roll accepted etc)..not so much, and he deserves credit for that.
@Fippy do you really think the middle of the map is so bad? "Lakes" wraps horizontally so you will always have neighbors east and west. If you're near the north or south edge that's a lot of useless land with lots of useless barbs.

I played something like this game (Emperor, NTT, Lakes, Big, Epic) and was very glad I built the Great Wall. Of course you could argue that if you can't deal with barbs how you gonna deal with 200+ unit AI stacks. :crazyeye:
 
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