Sid difficulty victory

[Noise]

I think I've stumbled across one of the few scenarios where the Sid difficulty (the one slightly past diety) is possible to beat and only took me 40+ hours to complete.

7 AI opponents
Large Map
Small landmass Archapagelo's
Domination victory only.
1.22 conquests

The viking bezerk is the only reason this is possible. I can go into detail... I'm not sure how often this is done.

So how's Civ4?

 

[nerovats]

Sid is not slightly beyond deity. Compared to deity the ai get's another 33% discount on sid (cost factor of 40 against 60). Beserks are very strong indeed.
Congrats on your victory.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

congrats! beating Sid is an accomplishment!!

I've only ever used an arch map to beat sid, myself.

 

[Noise]

I couldn't imagine trying Sid on anything beyond archapagelo... That would qualify as suicide I'd think. If you look at the reply from the save file (at the end of the game), you'll see most of the AI's were onto their 7th city and in a couple cases completely filled out their island before I had my second city. This game was actually started at an attempt to build a successful viking republic (and up to the invasion of the Germans, I remained a repbulic) on the emporer difficulty. After I saw my isle, I figured I was in the best possible position to make a run at Sid, so I hit the 'play last world' and chose sid instead of emporer (So I was aware of some of the map I was playing prior to game)... Gave me the same starting location, but it changed which AI's were spawned. Actually, I got lucky with random AI's... None of em were seafaring.

If it means anything, 50 turns to writing then rush to philosophy got me a free tech, even on Sid. Took literature and built the great library... Ran 90% taxes/10% luxury and used the massive treasury to build up as many cities as I could. Oh... To prevent on civ from running away in the tech race, you need to buy a tech from them and trade it to everyone else (and get your money back)... Makes it so the behind AI's you're trading with are researching newer techs for you to trade for.

I guess I should mention a few steps that I needed to take. Invading isles on diety (as byzantines for example) included dropping a massive stack of units, watching them attack your stack, and then hoping you had enough remaining to take the city. With the bezerks, you could attack from sea, move in the entire caravel fleet, wake everything, and even be able to attack with unused bezerks on the ground that turn (or later on, use a stack of artillery to kill the rails for the units coming at you).

I can share other save files if wanted... The japanese at one point hit over 700 cavalry in their military (planted spy told me so). In the 1700's the Japanese take a massive power reduction (which you can see in the replay)... The turn they discover mobile warfare and can produce tanks, they disband around 400 cavalry. That 400 cavalry leaves a massive chunk on the power graph ^^

The Hittites were my first victim... When I went for their main isle, I figured 50+ bezerks along with a dozen of so muskets would be more than enough to hit 2 cities at once. I was very wrong (and my first reload was back 3 turns to redo that invasion). There is one turn that I receive 5 or 6 military leaders... It's what happens when a stack of 50 some odd mostly elite bezerks gets to attack a stack consisting of 70 some odd Hittite swordsmen and spearmen.

My other big reload came later in the game. After the germans went down, I tried a quick move after the Indians... But it turnsout 16 viking armies with 15 health a peice are unable to capture one Indian city, so I couldn't even establish a landing. Reloaded the game there and switched to skinny tactics (my military advisor had 80 some workers on it and thats it... I disbanded close to 300 units, inclue 16 or 17 armies (used to make factories) and you can see that era on the power graph pretty easily, right after the fall of the germans). Anytime I needed to defend when I had no units but workers (happened a couple times) I used conscripted units to hold the first turn, and mass bought enough units to defend. For some silly reason, the Sid AI in all it's glory, still only ever made 3 or 4 transports... Making it so I barely had to worry about an actual invasion (and 'invasion' was 4 cavalry and 2 riflemen... They primarily landed on the chinese/ottoman isle, which I could raise some 15 conscripts in a turn). Doing this actually meant I could keep up to the AI's in science.

The key to this was over the top micromanagement... Planting forests before hospitals were avail to make each city producing at max and make no extra food per turn for example (In the golden age around the time of gunpowder, I had several cities producing bezerks in 2 turns... 35+ shields, without production bonus's. FYI, tiles with wine luxuries are great tiles to plant forests on). Heh, I even had my exceedingly corrupt cities producing decently late game by massing population as police officers or civil engineers. The alternative... Instead of whipping citizens into production you can conscript 2 from each city (under facism when I was doing it) on the isle and mass disband them (27 shields per) within whichever city you wanted to produce in. When I needed to mass transports, I used this mass disband to make 8 in 2 turns from 4 cities. Tis why everything in the corrupt islands is well irrigated.

I'd be happy to provide save points if anyone wanted to see the progression needed to combat Sid.

 

[Pentium]

Congrats, and welcome

I've also only beaten Sid on a Archipelago map. It's just so much safer and it gives you both the time and space needed to develop. Also, the AI "invasions" are easy to handle, while having a Sid civ invading you across a wide border is another matter.

Next challenge: have all Victory Conditions enabled, you'll be surprised at how early the AI's build the Spaceship parts

 

[Noise]

Heh, on a small Arch on Deity, they'll hit cultural victories in the late 1600's on me... Even a one city cultural win would be really early. Kinda funny, in the save file I provided... 2 of the top 5 cities remaining in the game are Japanese arctic cities. How those 2 cities managed to pull off that much culture, I've got no clue. They were likely past double or triple what they'd need for the cultural win by the time I finished. (Edit to add: then again, as Religious and at sid difficulty, the towns need 12 shields to make a temple don't they?)

Though spaceships weren't a factor in this game either and even with space race enable, I still would have got the domination win. Hehe, Actually by the end if dedicated myself to it (before raising the army) I was researching quicker then they were and probably would have beaten them to the space race. I won domination before most of the modern techs were avaiable (prespaceflight... All the nukes were tactical). I think that's in part due to the AI's in this game holding tight to facism for the most the time (With all the units they had, they kept attacking each other... Democracy was a rarety past 1600).

(great avatar you have there too )

 

[AutomatedTeller]

actually, my first Sid victory, I goosed things even more: 80% water, cold and arid - I think there were 2 sources of fresh water on teh entire world and I had one of them :lol

 

[Noise]

Lol well, I didn't go quite that far I think this was average/average/4 million years if I remember right. To be truthful, I wanted to try a smaller map first, but this map inspired me to try the Sid instead. I think it's got me on one of the larger isles, relatively isolated, and 2 luxuries. Hard to find much better than that... Alot of hills and mountains as well allowing me to max out a few productions. Most of the uninhabited smaller isles were really close to me as well, though I still couldn't beat the AI on the otherside of the world to colonizing a few of them.

SInce I had knowledge of the map, I sent 6 triemes, each with a settler on a voyage to an isle just out of reach. 2 sunk and 4 settlers arrived

 

[Noise]

I may as well put up the saves that I got. Each one is right before a major invasion. Each link is a save file from that time.


The first one is the Hittite invasion... And in my opinion is one of the more difficult ones to run. Hittite invasion . Heh, it'd almost be funny to play as a scenario. You've just hit your golden age as a Viking Republic. You've currently got 60+ Bezerks and 25 Musketmen ready to invade, while their stuck with swordsmen and spearmen... But you military advisor says you are weak compared to theirs. Heh, if you ever wanted to try playing 60 bezerks vs 150+ worth of swordsmen and spearmen, have fun.

Invasion of China comes next... You've just declared war and taken 2 Chinese cities as your own. This one is significantly easier to the one above, mostly due to diplomacy. The Chinese and Ottoman fight consistantly and China just captured the town of Bursa. So with the exception of the 5-8 musketmen in each city, the back door is relatively undefended... And from the Hittite war you've got a much more powerful weapon at your disposal. 8 armies with 2 Bezerks in each (some with 3 now) are available for the invasion... And does it ever make taking out musketmen from caravels a breeze. Although never underestimate your enemy as they are just coming off their golden age and have a good number of Riders available to counter your invasion. Your military boasts 93 Bezerks (I'd estimate 50 are elite), 35 Mustketmen, 9 armies, 27 cannon, and a decently large transport fleet (40 vessels)... Yet your military advisor tells you that you are weak compared to them. Few notes... Theres a large number of reenforcements coming off your main isle, alot already in transit. Magnetism was just discovered, so armies either have 2 or 3 Bezerks pending the ship they are in. Take a couple cities and let the chinese come after you... The riders will be first with their 3 moves, try to have them dead before the movement 1 units catch up. The large number of cannons are their to bombard the massive unit stacks before picking them off. Oh, and I annoyed the Japanese... So they're harrasing my coast line. Fortunately Bezerks make lovely units for preventing invasion. Load 3 bezerks into a caravel at every costal city and anytime they drop units, float over and attack them from the caravel. Fall of China is something I had to save since it amazed me. I finished capturing all of the Chinese cities, but their still alive somewhere. So I check through his unit stacks and find the settler keeping him alive. Whats really interesting about this save game... I managed to bait and trap a huge number of chinese units into mountains and captured all their cities. The military advisor will say, despite them having no cities and you have 97 Bezerks that you have an average military compared to them. Check the stacks of units in the mountains, and then find the one musketman defending his last settler with my musketmen army beside it. If that musketmen army defeats that veteran musketman, a number of units equal in strength to your own is removed

Unfortunately I have no intro for the German invasion, but thats just a matter of taking what just rolled over China and sending it to the German island. I found it quite fun taking 9 Bezerk armies (15 health each), along with 50 or so elite bezerks and running them at an island full of medival infantry, pikemen, spearmen, and the odd Musketmen. Fall of the Germans is the end of that invasion. Once again, I managed to finish off an enemy who had a rather large amount of units left on the board Unfortunately I had to drop to anarchy from a lil too much war weariness... So I'm soon to become a democracy

From there, the units all go to various locations... To be disbanded. And you're left with Skinny tactics ... one army protecting a front and 100+ workers (actually, the workers have almost completed their railroading and are about to join cities once hosipitals are made. My low point was 40 workers I think). At this save I don't have nationalism either... But theres alot of trading that needs to be done. India is behind Japan but quite a bit and if you can swing a deal for refining, india will give you replacable parts and nationalism for refining+electronics+sanitation... I'm just holding off beause I'm still 10 turns from Hoover and don't want them beating me to it.

From Democracy peace time, to Facist wartime. Heh, the first act of facism included conscripting 2 units from each and every city. Then having the game go through and make you fortify each and every one of the things (I saved right after doing that, never wanting to have to do that one again).

Invasion of Japan in 1982... Nuked a city twice and invaded. From this save point it's just a matter of using a nuke to inturrpt their railroads... And then nuke all their units the turn after when their stranded in the nuclear waste (Really... You can cut back on fighting somet 170 cavalry this way). It's the only invasion that starts with your military advisor saying their average compared to us. By 1990, japan is a wasteland and you're at the save that started this thread.

Incidentally... All it costs to make India cheer as you nuke Japan is oil

 

[Pentium]

Incidentally... All it costs to make India cheer as you nuke Japan is oil

Isn't India usually The nation in Civ3?