[BTS] Shadow Game Stalin

[Pedro78]

I'd like to make another statement, which I believe is valid for everyone ranging from the first-time-Noble-player to the most hardcore HoFfer:

There are exactly 3 overpowered mechanics in this game:

• Whipping
• Great people
• AI-abuse (mostly warfare, but trades can also be pretty abusive)

Everything else should only be a means to maximize the power of one or several of these mechanics. It might seem a bit vague but it's really something to keep in mind (and that people often forget about).

Spoiler 2 secondary overpowered mechanics :

• Corps can also be abused on some very special maps, but are a non-concern on almost any random map.
• Failgold can also be abused, but it requires a lot of planning if you don't want it to destroy other aspects of your game

 

[sampsa]

As this is Monarch/Pangaea, the map is likely winnable in the BCs, but that's besides the point.

It's fractal. I don't know if there are multiple continents, but certainly a player like cseanny could win a monarch/pang in the BCs if he wanted to.

Some will find annoying to look at a map they don't know and not see the resources

You are right, I'll keep that in mind.

I tend to agree with Gumbolt here. This game is so deep that you can't learn to do the "right things" immediately, as you'll never be able to determine them on your own. You have to witness different strategies, replicate them, see their benefits and flaws depending on the situation and make your own conclusions. Not easy to "think outside the box" when you don't even know what's in the box. But I agree that someone who's learning should always keep in mind that replicating the exact same strategy on two different maps will necessarily lead to suboptimal results.

I understand what you mean. It's easy to forget that something was hard when you started to learn it. I've played civ4 for what, 10 years so maybe my judgement is clouded as I've forgotten what it was like to learn the mechanics of this game from the scratch. Still, I think learning something that you need to unlearn later (in order to keep improving) will severely hamper your development. This is what I mean by "learn the right things".

That being said, I don't have a master degree in teaching Civ4 (nor a master degree at all lol), so anyone feel free to disagree with me

I have no masters degree, haven't studied pedagogy and have no real coaching experience in anything. So every bit of knowledge I share is based on my own attempts to improve at something. I've noticed that people have very different styles to learn things, something that I seem to forget quite often.

 

[elmurcis]

So many shadows, so much civ4 here - wow

 

[cseanny]

The idea is to play a good opening and try and teach OP some knowledge that he'll be able to re-use on the higher levels.

Exactly There is no cookie cutter, copy and paste end to all end openings. Well, at least not until you know more about the map o_^. Isolation or crowded maps can fit into similar baking pans for sure! And I have no idea why I'm using cooking analogies!

Why should level discredit the war approach? You have to perfectly balance maintenance and unit cost in conjunction with research. And of course, all the while you have to prioritize the proper tile management in such chaotic surroundings. Imo there's tremendously more skill involved in early war compared to peaceful expansion.

Deity comes down to the player having accumulated virtually all knowledge of game code mechanics; the intricate inner workings of how every individual AI reacts to every possible circumstance. Without this, you could have a sexy face in conjunction with a master whip and a flair for micro management and still lose miserably .

 

[Anysense]

Haha not really. It can actually be a healthy mechanic to (almost) systematically disagree with people, because then either you prove them wrong and they learn something, or you turn out to be wrong and you learn something.

I'll keep disagreeing then

Oasis+plains cows is extremely strong early on. This is not a double-gold start where you have BW+Pottery by T35, and even then it would be a great spot. The road can wait. And I don't see the 8 spots you're talking about (might be because of Sampsa's awful no-res-bubbles screenie).

Just count corns, pigs, coastal fish. Even sheep is better food than cows. No idea what's so great about oasis either. It's 1 more than a flood plain but you miss 2 from the trade routes (1 if its 3rd city), so oasis does not add anything. Cows is just a low food tile. It would be good in combination with flood plains, but only cows+oasis is just not enough food; lack of forests is also bad. With imperialistic/expansive it might be a decent settler/worker pump on size 2 or even 1, although still a bit weak for second city.

Plenty of stuff to do with workers here.

There aren't many tiles worth improving. Improving food, mining hills, farming/cottaging all riverside, roading and chopping will require ~200 workerturns by t90 or so. That is assuming that you keep expanding and growing your cities. For early warfare every city needs only 3 improved tiles, because it will be whipped whenever it is size 4.

Spoiler Irrelevant babble :

Probably not. However I'd say that not building enough farms (and consqequencially, workers) is often what prevents a great game to be a superb one (nothing personnal, just a conclusion that I've come to, looking through both S&T and HoF saves)

You need to look into my HOF games then. I tend to farm everything and almost never build cottages. Food is king

The only reason why I'd stop stealing workers is if I'm afraid of all the negative diplo from repeated DoWs, or want an AI to develop a little before I take its cities. IMO no reason to worry about the -1gpt from an extra worker when you have double-gold.

You also pay 1gpt for the unit that will steal that worker, and that unit also costs hammers, that can be enough to make Currency 1 or 2 turns later and cost you further 20-30 in missed traderoutes and 100-200 in missed trades. Besides, at this point nearly every AI has Alpha, so there is a high risk of a bribe. Mansa bribed against you around t50 = quit in most cases, and he can be easily bribed by any AI, bad or good, so long as they have a tech.

 

[Pedro78]

Loving this thread.

It's fractal

OP was stating pangaea. Was about to tell you "learn to read", but I opened the save just in case and it unfortunately appears that you're right. I don't doubt cseanny can win a Monarch map in the BCs.

I understand what you mean. It's easy to forget that something was hard when you started to learn it. I've played civ4 for what, 10 years so maybe my judgement is clouded as I've forgotten what it was like to learn the mechanics of this game from the scratch. Still, I think learning something that you need to unlearn later (in order to keep improving) will severely hamper your development. This is what I mean by "learn the right things".

I personnally went from not winning a single IMM game to beating average Deity maps in ~5 games after taking 10 lines of advice from AbsoluteZero and reading some posts around here. What I did was just look at some games and replicate the exact same strategies. I did also listen to some situational advice. Later, where I've learned the most was in some forum games where I got hopelessly outplayed -- made me even more eager to tear the other's saves apart and see what he/she did right and what I did wrong.

Deity comes down to the player having accumulated virtually all knowledge of game code mechanics; the intricate inner workings of how every individual AI reacts to every possible circumstance. Without this, you could have a sexy face in conjunction with a master whip and a flair for micro management and still lose miserably .

I think what you say applies to "winning BC Space" or simply making the most of a given map. But if the goal is just to "win", you don't need a whole lot of knowledge -- the basic mechanics + a bit of experience/feeling for things are enough.

Why should level discredit the war approach?

I give every credit to the war approach, I'm just assuming that OP will want to move to a higher difficulty level sometime soon (likely right after this game is over if all goes well), and then he won't be able to take this kind of approach because the skill level it requires on higher difficulties is too high. So IMO it's better to learn the basic stuff, then learn advanced warfare. I had a decent win-rate on deity before I could do decently at early warfare.

there's tremendously more skill involved in early war compared to peaceful expansion

Just quoting this to back up my previous point

 

[Gumbolt]

I feel like we have hijacked this thread.

 

[Pedro78]

Just count corns, pigs, coastal fish. Even sheep is better food than cows. No idea what's so great about oasis either. It's 1 more than a flood plain but you miss 2 from the trade routes (1 if its 3rd city), so oasis does not add anything. Cows is just a low food tile. It would be good in combination with flood plains, but only cows+oasis is just not enough food; lack of forests is also bad. With imperialistic/expansive it might be a decent settler/worker pump on size 2 or even 1, although still a bit weak for second city.

I'll answer this properly after I've played to T50 (probably not tomorrow as I've already spent so much time writing in this thread tonight and therefore so little "studying"). I'll also discuss the different options and might even play this twice, showing the two different approaches I see here. Just know that I still disagree with you

There aren't many tiles worth improving. Improving food, mining hills, farming/cottaging all riverside, roading and chopping will require ~200 workerturns by t90 or so. That is assuming that you keep expanding and growing your cities. For early warfare every city needs only 3 improved tiles, because it will be whipped whenever it is size 4.

I didn't see any Horses in Sampsa's screenie, so I'm assuming war will only come at Construction (which it would on Deity). Monarch is probably different, so it's a bit of a headache. Not sure how I'll play this. But "200 workerT by T90" is not how you should see this. There's also all the benefits from quicker cottages, chopped granaries etc.

Spoiler offtopic babble :

You need to look into my HOF games then

The particular game that I had in mind was Snaaty's IMM space race (spent quite a lot of time figuring what went wrong/could be better there), but I could cite many other games from great players that had the "too few farms" problem. I did also look at your HoF space saves though, and there's a million things there to agree/disagree about there aswell. I'd certainly be interested in discussing that with you (planning to play space aswell), but this is enough off-topic for now I think

I feel like we have hijacked this thread.

True. I'm done posting until I've finished the shadow.

 

[sampsa]

I personnally went from not winning a single IMM game to beating average Deity maps in ~5 games after taking 10 lines of advice from AbsoluteZero and reading some posts around here. What I did was just look at some games and replicate the exact same strategies. I did also listen to some situational advice. Later, where I've learned the most was in some forum games where I got hopelessly outplayed -- made me even more eager to tear the other's saves apart and see what he/she did right and what I did wrong.

Woah, that's an amazing learning curve. I've been reading these forums almost since civ4 got out and have had to do a lot of unlearning ever since (maybe this helps others to understand my views on the subject?).The general understanding of the game was absolutely horrible back then, and I had to figure out myself why I have to stop building courthouses, why settling GP is usually bad, how exactly granaries work, when to build them etc.

I feel like we have hijacked this thread.

Yeah, hope OP will still be posting after all this.

 

[elitetroops]

There aren't many tiles worth improving. Improving food, mining hills, farming/cottaging all riverside, roading and chopping will require ~200 workerturns by t90 or so. That is assuming that you keep expanding and growing your cities. For early warfare every city needs only 3 improved tiles, because it will be whipped whenever it is size 4.

For early warfare you can't have too many workers. Early warfare is all about speed. Faster chops and more roads towards enemies always help. Of course, this is most accurate in early conquest/domination games, where you don't necessarily aim at setting up a strong economy.

As this is Monarch/Pangaea, the map is likely winnable in the BCs, but that's besides the point. The idea is to play a good opening and try and teach OP some knowledge that he'll be able to re-use on the higher levels. Rolling over the map with HAs is fun, but at least before one can consistently beat Deity, he has to learn the game via identifying patterns and trying to replicate them in relevant situations. And the tech HBR -> kill the map pattern is pretty uncommon for random maps, even on Immortal.

I have to disagree a bit here. Rolling over the map with HAs can be one of the most useful exercises for someone struggling at monarch. If someone is struggling at this level, it means they are locked into some really bad habits and need to fundamentally change the way they think about the game. The HA roflstomp provides a very simple recipe for this: Forget about everything else, build nothing but HAs (and a few granaries), whip, chop, kill -> win. Essentially it says forget about everything you've done so far and only concentrate on very few basic actions. In doing so, the player is likely to achieve his best result ever and notice that this was done mainly by ignoring lots of things he previously thought valuable, such as buildings, defensive units and religion. And of course it will teach the power of whipping and chopping.

When you can do this on monarch, you can also do it on emperor and move on to immortal. On immortal the early rush conquest/domination win is quite a bit more difficult to pull off, so it's probably time to look more into developing your longer game. By now you've already learned that most buildings aren't needed, so then you can start looking into when some of them could be needed after all. Immortal is also the level when some game elements, like abusing trades with the AI, comes into play. On Monarch you can't really work on learning efficient teching, because you have to tech so much more yourself. The HA rushes should also have taught you a thing or two about efficient worker management, which can be expanded on at this stage when you want larger cities.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that if you want to rework your entire game, then it's easier to throw everything out and start small by using only a handful of features and techniques, then add more on top of that in later games to expand your toolbox, instead of throwing everything out and try to learn to master 100 aspects of the game at the same time. Oh, and since it was discussed, I do have a degree in pedagogy, though you are still perfectly allowed to disagree with me.

 

[Gumbolt]

To be fair it would of been prudent to set up a thread on how best to advice players who want help on Civ 4 years ago. Then the players advising today could use set scripts to help players. Or redirect to a thread that has a sticky on it.

 

[Anysense]

The trouble is, there is no universal approach. The best advice I ever received was "kill your neighbours before 500 BC" (IIRC that came from elitetroops), but not everyone would find such advice helpful.
One thing that always helps is having a clear goal. That can be pulling off a strong early HA rush or meeting certain benchmarks. This particular map with all the available land and random map script seems to favour learning how to expand and build empire.

 

[SquidInk]

Thanks all for your replies.

I have read the posts and replayed the first 50 turns several times. I can get to 4 cities quite easily with 2 or 3 workers but the uncertainty is about how to sow the seeds of a strong economy while trying to whip as much as possible. Choosing between farm and cottages is a little tough, those the cities away from the floodplains have very few spots for farms before Civil Service.

I will restart the whole thing and post saves, but I did play the game into the AD's and I got to be on good terms with Gilgamesh and Montezuma, and only went to war because they asked me for help. Doing quite alright in terms of tech compared to everybody (first to Philosophy, e.g., and maybe liberalism, too hopefully). I am hopeful that I could get a diplomatic victory or a space race.

To answer the question re some strange tech choices, I got Masonry for the Great Lighthouse and I ended up building the pyramids also. I could easily have gone for fishing first however, and not grab the copper first. I saw Gilgamesh was close and was concerned he would either build a city there or nearby. I am still not convinced grabbing that city first (or second) was a mistake though, given that I had decided not to get the horses. It did give me great peace of mind to be able to build axes from a city that had such a strong food source as the pigs. That road was clearly a waste of time, however; it could have waited. I did not use the axes on AIs, but on barbs and got two barb cities, one of which was poorly situated--I gifted to Monty for some diplomatic bonus. I also practiced the Failgold (industrious + organized religion + stone) but no-one seems to be building wonders. Chicken Itza and another wonder have been one turn from done in my city screen for several turns...

Now I'll restart and go for domination or conquest, which seems to be the preferred method from what you posted. What benchmarks should I try to hit?
For example, how many cities at turn 100, 150?
How many beakers at turns 50, 100, 150?
How many units at turns 50, 100, 150?

I think it's very possible to achieve a diplomatic victory here, though one civ seems to be on a different continent or on islands (someone beat me to Code of Laws). Would the benchmarks be different for a Diplomatic Victory? Obviously you don't get the gold from taking cities so is it even possible on Immortal or Deity?

And the map is fractal. My mistake.

I guess it's situational but generally speaking, what do you do with a Great Engineer when that's what pops out in your capital that has the Kids? Just build a wonder? I got the Mausoleum but should I have bulbed a tech or started a golden age?

 

[SquidInk]

Also with an ideal Bureaucracy capital such as this, wouldn't it make sense to build the Great Library?

 

[sampsa]

uncertainty is about how to sow the seeds of a strong economy while trying to whip as much as possible

You should not be whipping as much as possible before you have a granary. Maybe a whip or two to get a settler/worker out sooner to avoid working weak tiles. After a granary you should be looking to whip quite much, because a granary makes fluctuating in size so much more powerful (effectively doubles food).

Also, you don't endlessly need . Besides whipping, also growing and working cottages is powerful. Need a high -cap for that though, perhaps via monarchy.

I guess it's situational but generally speaking, what do you do with a Great Engineer when that's what pops out in your capital that has the Kids? Just build a wonder? I got the Mausoleum but should I have bulbed a tech or started a golden age?

I think GE is usually weaker than GS/GM, because the gained from rushing a wonder doesn't compare to the gained via bulb or gained via trade mission. Thus they are usually golden age fodder for me.

Also with an ideal Bureaucracy capital such as this, wouldn't it make sense to build the Great Library?

Bureau and GLib aren't connected in any way, so not sure what you mean. Actually, with bureaucracy you want to work -tiles, NOT specialists, because bureaucracy gives a bonus to and no specialist produces that.

 

[Gumbolt]

There is no real medal for reaching philosophy on monarch level. It's not difficult as the Ai can be easily out teched. It's not until higher levels when they start with workers and other techs that this becomes harder. I hope you did not stop at 4-5 cities. This is a common mistake of new players that don't expand.

GLH/Mids are nice wonder but I can see nothing on this start to suggest they are optimal. Your capital has no coastal tiles. Mids would take 20-30+ turns to build. You have no stone. I don't doubt you could build it first but would you really want to tie up your capital with this. I prefer monarchy for happiness . HR civic is great.

Copper in my opinion was the wrong first city choice. On higher levels with barbs it would be very risky to send the settler out 6-7 tiles. 2mp animals can be a big risk. The Ai would likely settle there first as they expand much quicker. You seem to be prioritising military resources over strong cities with great food production. The horse city had no food resources and would of been a horrible city. Military resources are important if you feel forced into a rush. Here you had room for 6-7 cities so grabbing land is much better option. Not saying the copper city isn't useful later.

You need some sort of strategy when you play civ 4. Wishy washy game play won't win you the game at higher levels. Here it seems you went for copper and started building an axe then switched strategy to build the mids. Food is king at start of the game. 4-5 great cities is better than a distant city with copper. 3-4 extra settler travelling turns has a snowball effect on your game. That is 3-4 turns less growth in your 2nd city compared to a site nearby. It's more worker turns to reach second city. That worker could of built a pasture in that time for the sheep. Every decision you make on civ 4 has an impact on your game. Making lots of wrong choices normally mean you are playing on a lower level. As you can afford mistakes. On higher levels this could mean game over. Are you playing the game for fun or do you want to learn how to beat the higher levels?

 

[SquidInk]

I do want to play at higher levels but the game is a way to relax for me. I want to be able to have a couple of drinks and Civ (and thus make a couple mistakes here and there). If this means I only conquer Monarch or Emperor, so be it.

I do appreciate all the insights you guys are providing and I am implementing many of strategies you are providing. Representation is the Civics I do the best with, which often leads me to build the Pyramids or attempt to. At worst I get failgold. Here, the Pyramids seemed like a no brainer because of the abundance of food in the capital (there's also Stone nearby; I ended up hooking that up).

I also seem to remember someone here (or maybe it was on youtube) saying that few wonders are worth building but that the pyramids are one of them. With an industrious leader, that's even more of a no brainer in my noobinion (or a spiritual leader, too).

 

[Gumbolt]

Mids here is not bad if you have stone. You would need mids or monarchy for happiness here. You obviously found stone.

 

[dutchfire]

I think when you're trying to learn the game, it might be helpful to sometimes play with additional constraints (but to remember that those constraints are not there in reality). Just like when you're training for sports, you don't train exactly the same thing every time, sometimes you do interval, sometimes you add extra weight, sometimes you do it shorter but with high intensity. This way, you're training a larger part of your palette of capabilities.

Something like kill your neighbours before 500 BC is a nice challenge. Perhaps also try to play a game where you conquer the world with cuirassiers and did not build any wonders. Perhaps a game where the only buildings you can use are granaries and lighthouses. An Always War game.
This way, you have to develop other parts of your repertoire.

 

[Gumbolt]

If you want 4 cities by 2000bc here you can probably squeeze BW in before AH. Monarch level you tech a bit faster anyway compared to higher levels. If you restart and build mids learn to whip units/buildings into mids. So 60 hammer build ideal whip is at 29 hammers. This gives you a 29H overflow when you whip from 4 to 2 pop. With other hammers from production you could have 100+ hammers into mids with one whip. Chops add 40h with stone. Of course you will need to connect the stone to your network of cities.

Getting the happiness early on is the biggest issue with this start. Early exploration is also key on any map. I suspect if you had explored more elsewhere you might of changed your city plans.