SG: Queen Teuta

[Hypnotoad]

I wouldn't be surprised if we have enough support for 2 succession games -- if so, I say we go for it.

Some people have trouble playing on a huge map late in the game (the turns take forever to process). So it would probably be good to at least have one non-huge map to play on.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

I would be interested in playing. Its just I have no time for it.
Though lurking is almost as good.
I'd like to see a rome sg where you replay the roman empire.

 

[schlappi]

Well, if we play a "prime" civilisation like rome, i'd vote to play atleast emperor level, if not even harder...

 

[Jet]

I probably won't play until

Who was I kidding?



I'm sorry folks missed their last turnsets...
Turn 16:

That's what I'm talkin' about.

After Vice Royalty (1 turn) Christianity was fast (4 turns) and we rushed most of the Holy Empire with a spare Engineer (4 turns left). It looked vaguely familiar:

I immediately voted ourselves Empress:

While waiting 4 eternally long turns for a vote to come up, we popped a great prophet. I had something for him to do which was completely useless, but completely awesome:

Shrines totally blow in this version.

Finally a vote came up:

The votes:

 

[Jet]

Our efforts were rewarded with m@@@d gr@@@FX:

And screens O' glory:

I always find the GNP impossible to interpret usefully.

Did we have a golden age? It's all a blur.

This one, though, is always useful to look at:

And DE-lightful to look at in hindsight.

I wonder what the jump at the end was? The Mausoleum we got a bit earlier. Maybe Ampitheaters, but they take a few turns to build...

Our ridiculous sweep of world wonders:

And with a little cut'n'paste:

The score:

Augustus who? We wasted their asses in 3000 BC!

 

[Jet]

end game diplomacy

The only AI who voted for us was Aeetes, with a net of +10. Dido had a net +7 and Hiram +6. It makes the AIs seem like jerks, but it's consistent what I've heard about vanilla, that you need (approximately?) +8 to get a diplo victory vote from an AI.

Dido was 1 point away from +8. Maybe if we had spammed her with tech gifts just before the vote, we might have gotten a "shared your tech discoveries". Or if we had not invaded Egypt, it sounds like we'd have avoided some of the close borders demerit.

Hiram was 2 points away from +8. Certainly if we had gotten kept him Greek Poly (was he ever in Greek Poly?) that would have turned the -2 into something positive. Or if we hadn't invaded Lydia, we could have avoided his -2 close borders demerit.

So it seems like with the right moves we could have gotten a diplo victory after taking over Iberia or France, maybe even Germany. I'm not trying second-guess our game at all, just analyzing it for anyone who wants to try a diplo in the future.

 

[Jet]

Vice Royalty vs. Aristocracy

I did some calculations about Vice Royalty vs. Aristocracy. Actually testing it would be a bit of a pain because you have to interpret the screens, and it would have taken 5 turns (!!) to revolt from Aristocracy to Vice Royalty. (I had no idea! Depends on empire size? Time through the game?)

But here are some "on-paper" calculations from the turn we got Vice Royalty.

Vice Royalty is No Upkeep vs Aristocracy is Low. Difference: 96 GPT. Distance maintenance was 180 (# of cities was 134). So Vice Royalty would buy us 96 + 180 = 276 GPT.

Aristocracy gives +100% commerce in capital. Lissus's base commerce was 77. (In a heavy cottage city it could be more, but it wasn't for us.) So we were getting 77 GPT from that. We were also getting +1 trade route in each city. I scrolled through our 51 cities (the United City States of Illyria... hmm...) and added up the weakest trade route from each city. Four big cities in Egypt were in revolt so I assigned each one of them a value of 3, the same as Cumae. Values of weakest trade routes:
8 (Lissus)
6 (Albanopoli)
5 (Skodra)
4 (Rome)
3 (21 cities)
2 (20 cities)
1 (6 cities)
Total trade route bonus from Aristocracy: 132. So Aristocracy was buying us 77 + 132 = 209. Vice Royalty came out ahead, as it should have for a large empire like ours. Now, you could take Lissus's Great Academy and Plato's Academy into account. Running at 70% beakers as we were, those special buildings were turning the +77 from Aristocracy into (77) * (70%) * (250%) = 135. 132 + 135 = 267 beakers. So even with Plato's Academy (which I personally think is overpowered), Vice Royalty still came out a bit ahead! So our game did NOT show that Aristocracy is completely broken, although in my opinion it might be overpowered anyway.

 

[SrWilliam]

Well done, that was fast!

Great game guys, it was fun and informative.

Thank you for teaching me the tavern/artist/pop-the-fat-cross trick.

Thank you for showing me the potential of bee lining early to a high military tech. I rarely bee line. I think we milked the Kambsor UU to it’s limits.

Thank you for reinforcing the power of war. Many builders like myself can profit from a little more war.

Thank you for reinforcing the vulnerability of civilizations the first few turns of the game.

Thank you for reinforcing the power of the smithy/great engineer/sphinx trick. I think this strategy is the TAM equivalent of the vanilla civ CS slingshot, which will be no more as soon as the warlords patch goes live.

SW

 

[Hypnotoad]

Nicely done everyone! I think this worked well. A proposal:

2 SG Games, one we start soon (1.97) and another that we start when Warlords comes out.

I definitely learned a lot, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on a lot of it. I think I came to appreciate the power of slavery a lot more. But I'm sure this game also had subtle influences on my game play, which is, I think, one of the biggest benefits, since it is so hard to talk about the little things.

SrWilliam: when it comes to Immortal level or higher, I find that beelining for Masonry is actually a faster and more reliable way to get the Sphinx (unless you lack stone and have philosophical).

PS: Nice to see how to take over the world. Haven't really done that.

 

[Drtad]

Nice game guys! What civ are you planning on doing next? I might join in next time. Babylon? Phoenicia? I always did want to play as the Scythians. But beware allowing me to join, I might make the game harder for you guys to win cause as I stated before I am not a very good player.

 

[Drtad]

Should the next SG game be for vanilla 1.97? or are we going to wait for the next version?

 

[Hypnotoad]

I say we do a 1.97 one. Either: Rome on the second highest difficulty level or something more obscure on a lesser level.

 

[Drtad]

Maybe a normal Med map game Prince difficulty as the Hittites or Kolcheans?

 

[SrWilliam]

I am interested in a higher difficulty Succession game

I am interested in TAM version of the game of the month. I think this could be as educational as an SG, if we have multiple stop points to report progress. Not that we have to do this every month, but one game could be fun.

I would love to do another TAM pitboss game!

Depending on their ETA, we may want to wait for 1.78 or wait for TAM Warlords.

 

[Hypnotoad]

Drtad:

I think we need a higher difficulty level than the last game. Overall, that just wasn't very challenging. If you are worried about having trouble at the higher level: don't. It is supposed to be a learning experience and you will get help from others.

I mean, I suppose that if there is support for it, we could have two SG: one at a higher difficulty level and another at a lower level.

 

[Drtad]

Whatever difficulty level you guys want is fine by me. And SrWilliam, I think the ETA for the next version is later next week. That is subject to change though.