SirPleb
Shaken, not stirred.
Introduction
This thread begins with a description of an approach I've been developing for a Sid level HOF game.
When I make significant progress in a game or refine my approach further and start over, I'll post additional notes on this thread.
Note that this will not be a general purpose strategy for beating Sid! It is a specific approach to a HOF game. It is a combined strategy which includes the process of selecting the map: the game strategy influences the choice of map parameters, and the map parameters of course influence the game strategy.
Background
Sid level has great scoring potential - the base score is multiplied by 8. That's 33% more than the Civ3/PTW Deity level multiplier. It would be great to take advantage of this
But Sid level also presents some major challenges in a HOF game. In addition to the basic challenge of Sid level (it is rather difficult on almost any map):
o A huge map is necessary for maximum score. This increases the cost of buying techs to a very high level. And purchasing tech generally seems necessary at Sid level
o A high scoring game must effectively be won by conquest to allow subsequent milking. I think that conquest is one of the harder victories to go for at Sid level.
o The Sid level tech pace is murderous. This is tough at any time but is especially so for a high score game. For maximum score we want to take out opponents quickly. With the AIs running away in tech it is especially difficult to attack them in the early or mid game.
o HOF huge map games must have at least eight opponents. The more opponents, the harder the game at Sid level. Each Sid opponent is nasty and will be expensive to subdue.
o On a huge map with eight opponents resources and luxuries will be scarce. (They're scarcer in Conquests than in previous versions of Civ.)
To offset these difficulties I think it is more important than ever to carefully choose the values of the discretionary HOF map parameters.
The Experimental Approach
I started out with some ideas about how to approach a huge Sid game, combined with a gut feel that those ideas wouldn't be enough to do the trick So I decided to dig in and to learn as I went.
I'd already experimented a fair bit with Conquests to get a feel for it, and had played a bit at Sid level.
I started out thinking that the Dutch or Maya would be a good Civ choice - agricultural and either industrious (always nice) or seafaring (make contacts quickly.) I figured on using archipelago, and using fast exploration combined with the resulting slow AI-AI contacts to claw my way along in Ancient Times tech trading.
Much of that (and other things such as the opponent Civs I select) has changed. I've played about ten games so far, to game dates between 1500BC and 500BC. I've learned a bit from each attempt, both in terms of the strategy I'll use and the map settings I want for that strategy. The following notes describe what I'm currently using. My current game may or may not work out (it is off to an excellent start) but I think that regardless of that game's result the strategy is now fairly good. I don't expect to refine it much further before either having a successful game or abandoning this silly idea altogether
Map Settings
Difficulty level: Sid!
Civilization: Iroquois. Agricultural, Commercial, Mounted Warrior. I haven't seriously considered a non-agricultural Civ. Agricultural is awesome for a high scoring game - fast initial growth, and a bit more food on the map. The other trait took some experimenting to decide. Seafaring (Dutch) was nice but not a big deal after all - making quick contact with the other Civs didn't give a huge boost and was a short-lived advantage. Industrious (Maya) was nice but still not great. I found along the way that one of the greatest Sid obstacles is the high corruption level. OCN is just 18 for a huge map. The new Forbidden Palace (I'm using Conquests v1.15) doesn't add another non-corrupt region. RCP has been squashed. All this adds up to a rather weak human civilization. I ended up choosing commercial as the second trait I most wanted, to combat corruption a bit by increasing OCN. Agricultural+Commercial = Iroquois. The Iroquois UU seems fine for my purposes. Mounted Warriors should still be useful against early Middle Ages adversaries, the time I expect to first be able to use them.
Landform: Archipelago. The most important reason for this at Sid level is to delay AI contacts a bit. The longer the AI contacts are delayed, the slower the initial tech pace. A secondary reason is the higher scoring potential - archipelago maps can have nearly 10% more tiles than pangaea maps. I'm using the 60% water setting of course.
Climate/age: Wet, warm, five billion years, as usual for HOF games. This produces maps which are fairly food-rich.
Barbarians: None. Again, I want to slow the tech pace. There's little point in having goody huts at Sid level. The human player won't get anything except barbarians, maps, and the occasional unit from them. But the AIs will get good stuff.
Rules: Default all except "Culturally Linked Start Loc" - I turned this off so that Civ placements will be a bit more random between one try and the next.
AI aggression: Less aggressive. Initially I played using "least aggressive" on the theory that I don't want the AIs attacking me until I'm ready. I want to choose the fights. I still think that setting would work. But I was a bit uncomfortable with it, it didn't seem quite right to make such a safe world. And then in one of my attempts I decided to start my first war, saw that my opponent had units within my territory, and played the "aggravate them and ask them to leave" trick. (If they declare war there's a nice happiness boost.) It didn't work! A huge bully Civ which I expected would always tell me to stuff it meekly agreed to leave. That was the final straw, "less aggressive" is now my preferred setting.
Rivals: Mongols, Zulu, Arabia, America, China, Egypt, Inca, Aztecs. I've been refining this list over time. There are many options here and this may not yet be an ideal set. My reasons for selecting this set of rivals:
o None of them is scientific or seafaring. Scientific I don't want on principle - the more scientific Civs, the faster the tech pace. Slowing that has been one of my main objectives. Initially I thought seafaring opponents would be ok but they proved a nuisance in my early attempts. They tended to quickly contact other Civs and thus speed up the pace, as well as removing some of the advantage I could gain by having more isolated early contacts. So I subsequently excluded them.
o Expansionist is a low-threat trait when there aren't any goody huts and the landform is archipelago.
o Religious is less powerful for Sid level AIs than it is at low levels - the AIs flip government in one turn at Sid level whether they're religious or not.
o None of these Civs starts with Alphabet, Bronze Working, or The Wheel. Note that this means none of them is commercial. That wasn't an objective for me, it is just an effect of eliminating Civs which start with Alphabet. Having no Civ which starts with any of those techs results in: (a) Slowing the tech pace a bit since they can't initially trade for those techs, (b) Gives me good odds that if I research Writing at the 50 turn rate and then Philosophy as quickly as I can, I'll be the first Civ to learn Philosophy. Note that this factor interacts with selecting the Iroquois. They start with Alphabet. When I was playing Maya my thinking was to exclude Civs who start with Masonry.
Generating a Map
Moonsinger's Map Finder utility is a wonderful aid in this process!
I've been playing only maps which have:
o At least a 4300 tile domination limit. Initially I set the limit at 4400. There are a good number of archipelago maps which have that much land. But I found that wasn't giving me enough maps after I played the opening sequence and applied my other selection criteria.
o Start on a river.
o Start with at least one food bonus in the 9 tile start radius.
o At least two more food bonuses nearby for the second and third towns to use. The second bonus must become visible by the time the capital's boundaries expand at turn ten, and the third bonus must become visible by the time I found the second town - if I don't see those bonuses by then I abandon the map even if it looks great in other regards (e.g. a luxury beside the capital.)
Finally, if I don't see a "required" resource by the time the expansion phase is nearing completion, I abandon the map. This is a painful thing. It will happen more with Conquests than with earlier versions of Civ because resources are scarcer. And playing with eight rivals means resources are already not plentiful. I've abandoned two games so far after playing them a long way due to the lack of a critical resource. It might be possible to win such maps but a really high score does not seem possible. In the case of playing the Iroquois I consider horses to be a critical resource.
(continued in next post)
This thread begins with a description of an approach I've been developing for a Sid level HOF game.
When I make significant progress in a game or refine my approach further and start over, I'll post additional notes on this thread.
Note that this will not be a general purpose strategy for beating Sid! It is a specific approach to a HOF game. It is a combined strategy which includes the process of selecting the map: the game strategy influences the choice of map parameters, and the map parameters of course influence the game strategy.
Background
Sid level has great scoring potential - the base score is multiplied by 8. That's 33% more than the Civ3/PTW Deity level multiplier. It would be great to take advantage of this
But Sid level also presents some major challenges in a HOF game. In addition to the basic challenge of Sid level (it is rather difficult on almost any map):
o A huge map is necessary for maximum score. This increases the cost of buying techs to a very high level. And purchasing tech generally seems necessary at Sid level
o A high scoring game must effectively be won by conquest to allow subsequent milking. I think that conquest is one of the harder victories to go for at Sid level.
o The Sid level tech pace is murderous. This is tough at any time but is especially so for a high score game. For maximum score we want to take out opponents quickly. With the AIs running away in tech it is especially difficult to attack them in the early or mid game.
o HOF huge map games must have at least eight opponents. The more opponents, the harder the game at Sid level. Each Sid opponent is nasty and will be expensive to subdue.
o On a huge map with eight opponents resources and luxuries will be scarce. (They're scarcer in Conquests than in previous versions of Civ.)
To offset these difficulties I think it is more important than ever to carefully choose the values of the discretionary HOF map parameters.
The Experimental Approach
I started out with some ideas about how to approach a huge Sid game, combined with a gut feel that those ideas wouldn't be enough to do the trick
So I decided to dig in and to learn as I went.I'd already experimented a fair bit with Conquests to get a feel for it, and had played a bit at Sid level.
I started out thinking that the Dutch or Maya would be a good Civ choice - agricultural and either industrious (always nice) or seafaring (make contacts quickly.) I figured on using archipelago, and using fast exploration combined with the resulting slow AI-AI contacts to claw my way along in Ancient Times tech trading.
Much of that (and other things such as the opponent Civs I select) has changed. I've played about ten games so far, to game dates between 1500BC and 500BC. I've learned a bit from each attempt, both in terms of the strategy I'll use and the map settings I want for that strategy. The following notes describe what I'm currently using. My current game may or may not work out (it is off to an excellent start) but I think that regardless of that game's result the strategy is now fairly good. I don't expect to refine it much further before either having a successful game or abandoning this silly idea altogether
Map Settings
Difficulty level: Sid!
Civilization: Iroquois. Agricultural, Commercial, Mounted Warrior. I haven't seriously considered a non-agricultural Civ. Agricultural is awesome for a high scoring game - fast initial growth, and a bit more food on the map. The other trait took some experimenting to decide. Seafaring (Dutch) was nice but not a big deal after all - making quick contact with the other Civs didn't give a huge boost and was a short-lived advantage. Industrious (Maya) was nice but still not great. I found along the way that one of the greatest Sid obstacles is the high corruption level. OCN is just 18 for a huge map. The new Forbidden Palace (I'm using Conquests v1.15) doesn't add another non-corrupt region. RCP has been squashed. All this adds up to a rather weak human civilization. I ended up choosing commercial as the second trait I most wanted, to combat corruption a bit by increasing OCN. Agricultural+Commercial = Iroquois. The Iroquois UU seems fine for my purposes. Mounted Warriors should still be useful against early Middle Ages adversaries, the time I expect to first be able to use them.
Landform: Archipelago. The most important reason for this at Sid level is to delay AI contacts a bit. The longer the AI contacts are delayed, the slower the initial tech pace. A secondary reason is the higher scoring potential - archipelago maps can have nearly 10% more tiles than pangaea maps. I'm using the 60% water setting of course.
Climate/age: Wet, warm, five billion years, as usual for HOF games. This produces maps which are fairly food-rich.
Barbarians: None. Again, I want to slow the tech pace. There's little point in having goody huts at Sid level. The human player won't get anything except barbarians, maps, and the occasional unit from them. But the AIs will get good stuff.
Rules: Default all except "Culturally Linked Start Loc" - I turned this off so that Civ placements will be a bit more random between one try and the next.
AI aggression: Less aggressive. Initially I played using "least aggressive" on the theory that I don't want the AIs attacking me until I'm ready. I want to choose the fights. I still think that setting would work. But I was a bit uncomfortable with it, it didn't seem quite right to make such a safe world. And then in one of my attempts I decided to start my first war, saw that my opponent had units within my territory, and played the "aggravate them and ask them to leave" trick. (If they declare war there's a nice happiness boost.) It didn't work! A huge bully Civ which I expected would always tell me to stuff it meekly agreed to leave. That was the final straw, "less aggressive" is now my preferred setting.
Rivals: Mongols, Zulu, Arabia, America, China, Egypt, Inca, Aztecs. I've been refining this list over time. There are many options here and this may not yet be an ideal set. My reasons for selecting this set of rivals:
o None of them is scientific or seafaring. Scientific I don't want on principle - the more scientific Civs, the faster the tech pace. Slowing that has been one of my main objectives. Initially I thought seafaring opponents would be ok but they proved a nuisance in my early attempts. They tended to quickly contact other Civs and thus speed up the pace, as well as removing some of the advantage I could gain by having more isolated early contacts. So I subsequently excluded them.
o Expansionist is a low-threat trait when there aren't any goody huts and the landform is archipelago.
o Religious is less powerful for Sid level AIs than it is at low levels - the AIs flip government in one turn at Sid level whether they're religious or not.
o None of these Civs starts with Alphabet, Bronze Working, or The Wheel. Note that this means none of them is commercial. That wasn't an objective for me, it is just an effect of eliminating Civs which start with Alphabet. Having no Civ which starts with any of those techs results in: (a) Slowing the tech pace a bit since they can't initially trade for those techs, (b) Gives me good odds that if I research Writing at the 50 turn rate and then Philosophy as quickly as I can, I'll be the first Civ to learn Philosophy. Note that this factor interacts with selecting the Iroquois. They start with Alphabet. When I was playing Maya my thinking was to exclude Civs who start with Masonry.
Generating a Map
Moonsinger's Map Finder utility is a wonderful aid in this process!
I've been playing only maps which have:
o At least a 4300 tile domination limit. Initially I set the limit at 4400. There are a good number of archipelago maps which have that much land. But I found that wasn't giving me enough maps after I played the opening sequence and applied my other selection criteria.
o Start on a river.
o Start with at least one food bonus in the 9 tile start radius.
o At least two more food bonuses nearby for the second and third towns to use. The second bonus must become visible by the time the capital's boundaries expand at turn ten, and the third bonus must become visible by the time I found the second town - if I don't see those bonuses by then I abandon the map even if it looks great in other regards (e.g. a luxury beside the capital.)
Finally, if I don't see a "required" resource by the time the expansion phase is nearing completion, I abandon the map. This is a painful thing. It will happen more with Conquests than with earlier versions of Civ because resources are scarcer. And playing with eight rivals means resources are already not plentiful. I've abandoned two games so far after playing them a long way due to the lack of a critical resource. It might be possible to win such maps but a really high score does not seem possible. In the case of playing the Iroquois I consider horses to be a critical resource.
(continued in next post)
If the AIs were still building other wonders, e.g. Hanging Gardens, at the time they learn Literature and pass it around, they'd zoom past from behind and beat the human's build of Great Library. But in two of three tries so far I've had AI construction go so quickly that by the time they learned Literature, there were no ancient wonders unfinished except Great Library. And that allowed me to get there first, even with a relatively slow build which didn't impact my higher priority of rapid expansion. In my current game I've just passed that point, building the Great Library in 490BC.
