Sisiutil & Lord Parkin (Multiplayer Team Game)

[oyzar]

I think Julius / pacal have the potential to be better at least. And why not gift tarsus to sisiutil if it is such a good gp city?

 

[Yesod]

The last time I played team multiplayer I noticed that when you change the difficulty level, the AI difficulty rating doesn't change. I think the AI will always be noble on mp, and all that you change is the player's penalties. Thats why I stopped at least; my first game Catherine/Montezuma declared war on me in 500 b.c. and sent 2 warriors...this was on monarch as well.

If I'm wrong though this sounds like a good idea.

 

[Strato]

Lord Parkin, are you going to bolster your military? It looks a little weak

 

[Lord Parkin]

I think Julius / pacal have the potential to be better at least.

It's interesting that you say that, because I would pick Organized over Expansive as a more useful general-purpose trait. Pacal also has a UU that is extremely situational in its potential. In most cases you'll have metal nearby, so the Holkan just means you'll have Spearmen a couple of turns before you otherwise would. (Personally I'd take Mali's Skirmisher instead any day - comes earlier and easier to rush with.) Granted, Pacal's UB is decent, though not superb.

Julius/Pacal also have a starting tech overlap which Augustus/Darius don't, so they start with one less tech - a small thing, but slightly important nonetheless. Augustus/Darius can also research immediately to both Bronze Working (for Copper) and Animal Husbandry (for Horses) as well, which Julius/Pacal can't.

And why not gift tarsus to sisiutil if it is such a good gp city?

Because Tarsus is so close to Persepolis (3 tiles, minimum possible distance) that I need to rearrange tiles between the two cities. If Sisiutil had Tarsus then it'd stuff up a lot of Persepolis's economy and food, since it's impossible to rearrange tiles between cities of different empires.

No, Tarsus is definitely better in my hands, nice though it would be for Sis to have a decent GP-generating city.

The last time I played team multiplayer I noticed that when you change the difficulty level, the AI difficulty rating doesn't change. I think the AI will always be noble on mp, and all that you change is the player's penalties. Thats why I stopped at least; my first game Catherine/Montezuma declared war on me in 500 b.c. and sent 2 warriors...this was on monarch as well.

If I'm wrong though this sounds like a good idea.

I'm fairly sure that you're just talking about the "custom game" screen, which lists all of the AI players as being at "Noble" level. This is a badly worded screen, and the difficulty columns for the AI players probably shouldn't have been put in there at all. Rest assured that by altering the human player's difficulty to a higher level, the AI do get their advantages (such as cheaper production and cheaper research).

Lord Parkin, are you going to bolster your military? It looks a little weak

Yep, that's already been done in the latest session that we played today. I didn't need much of a military earlier because my empire was safely tucked away behind Sis's iron military empire. But since the discovery of Astronomy, the threat of overseas naval invasions has grown (and I've started to get hungers for Mansa's lands). Hence you'll notice in the most recent session, I've begun bolstering up my defences, as well as getting together a small offensive army.

I'll hopefully get the next session written up sometime tonight. (EDIT: I'm a little busy tonight, so it may come a bit later. )

 

[azzaman333]

Looks like an interesting game, too bad it's Monarch with 2 great civs and a great starting location making it more like Noble

 

[CivCorpse]

You may want to consider gifting some military units to LP and let him fight some battles. Unless GG points are team based rather than individual leaders within a team. At some point they will be cheaper for LP even with the Imperialistic bonus from Augustus.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Looks like an interesting game, too bad it's Monarch with 2 great civs and a great starting location making it more like Noble

Not quite. On Noble the AI don't often fight back with colossal stacks, and they fall behind in tech much more quickly. As you'll see in the coming update, Sitting Bull has become an extremely formidable force, and Willem/Huayna are still researching some techs that we don't yet have. (I'll leave you with that little teaser for now, you'll have to wait for the update to see the details.)

You may want to consider gifting some military units to LP and let him fight some battles. Unless GG points are team based rather than individual leaders within a team. At some point they will be cheaper for LP even with the Imperialistic bonus from Augustus.

Mmm, I'll have to check that. If my Great General thresholds are independent of Sis's, then it's worth me fighting some more. I think Sis has just got his sixth Great General, while I'm yet to get my first. (Although I'm close to it, now that I'm fighting Mansa.)

While I've got the thought - Sis, remind me to gift you Stone next session so you can build West Point. I keep forgetting about that.

 

[PaulusIII]

Not quite. On Noble the AI don't often fight back with colossal stacks, and they fall behind in tech much more quickly. As you'll see in the coming update, Sitting Bull has become an extremely formidable force, and Willem/Huayna are still researching some techs that we don't yet have. (I'll leave you with that little teaser for now, you'll have to wait for the update to see the details.)

Hmm... Bull is still strong despite being chained to a dead man, so to say?

 

[LingLinsRevenge]

As far as I am concerned, LP and Sis do not have to justify the difficulty level at all.

So what if it is a walk over or not. Yes they got lucky in terrain. Part of the game -- Read

If these guys complaining want to see difficult games posted, let them do it. I tried to do it once, and write-ups are soooo hard to do well.

F@@@-um -- do what you do, and do not waste your time justifying difficullty.

You started this thread 3 days ago and have 2,415 views +..... that speaks for itself

thanks for the job well done

 

[Lord Parkin]

Hmm... Bull is still strong despite being chained to a dead man, so to say?

Yes... at least, strong in military terms. His technology is starting to fall behind a little, but he still has vast numbers of units, which caused us a bit of trouble yesterday. To give you an idea of how confident of his military he is, during the last session we played he declared war on another AI team in-between a war with us, and still did quite a bit of damage to that AI team (he even holds several of their cities to the present day!).

But enough of the spoilers and teasers, I won't say anything more on that until I've posted up the next session's write-up.

As far as I am concerned, LP and Sis do not have to justify the difficulty level at all.

So what if it is a walk over or not. Yes they got lucky in terrain. Part of the game -- Read

If these guys complaining want to see difficult games posted, let them do it. I tried to do it once, and write-ups are soooo hard to do well.

F@@@-um -- do what you do, and do not waste your time justifying difficullty.

You started this thread 3 days ago and have 2,415 views +..... that speaks for itself

thanks for the job well done

Thanks for the encouragement.

 

[dutchfire]

But enough of the spoilers and teasers, I won't say anything more on that until I've posted up the next session's write-up.

Stop teasing us!

 

[Lord Parkin]

Stop teasing us!

Oh, all right. I have the next session's write-up ready to post now.

By the way, I should note that I spent most of my time during the last couple of days playing with Sis, and as a result didn't have a lot of time to write. We still haven't finished the game yet, but we're now quite a bit ahead of where the write-ups are (we've just finished playing our ninth session).

All that this means for you (the readers) is that all of my write-ups from this point on will be ancient history. The only difference this should make is that, although you're free to make comments on how we could do things better, we can't incorporate them into our game (since we're now far into the future of where the write-ups are).

Never fear though, I like to finish what I start, so the write-ups will definitely continue until I get to the very end of the game. And with luck, they should still be just as interesting to read as the earlier ones.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Session VII: 1270 AD - 1425 AD​

The session began with the news of Peter losing yet another city to the Zulus. Being a lone civ on a continent containing a strong military team (Shaka/Justinian), it's probably no wonder that the Russians were doing so badly. (Isabella started on a separate continent to her teammate Peter.)

The very next turn... we encountered this.



Apparently, Sitting Bull had finally decided to help out his teammate a bit, after years of letting him get pounded. At this point we had two choices - we could end the war with Sury/Bull to avoid the colossal stack approaching. But that wouldn't solve the problem of dealing with the massive stack, it'd just postpone it until the next time we declared war. Additionally, we'd get more negative diplomacy points with other teams from declaring war multiple times, and we had enough of those already. Hence, we decided to ride it through and see if we could eliminate Bull's stack through superior tactics.

We wagered that Bull would attack Pompeii, given the route that his troops had taken (and the attraction of the zero city defences on open flatland), and so we shifted some units to prepare a counterattack force nearby. Next turn we were proved right - Bull did indeed move his stack towards Pompeii. Incidentally, on this same turn the AP vote for stopping the war came up, and Bull strangely voted in favour (odd because things were looking up for him from a military point of view). Sis and I both voted no, and noticed that we now had enough votes between us to outvote the AP by ourselves - a handy thing, since we should no longer be bothered by the resolutions.



(Incidentally, we had just met the last AI team – Pericles/Roosevelt, who were technologically backward and alone on an island to the far north.)

With all of those Trebuchets in Bull's stack, it wasn't worth fortifying the city of Pompeii, since Bull would just make mincemeat of our collaterally damaged troops. Sis wasn't as keen as me to completely abandon the city though, so left 2 units there for a token show of defence, while emptying the city of all other units. The next turn, Bull attacked, and (predictably) won the battle for Pompeii, losing only two Catapults.



We hadn't expected the borders to pop right out immediately when he took the city, so we were a little surprised by that. It meant we couldn't counterattack straight away, since the roads to Pompeii were now in Bull's territory. However, this made little difference to our plans: regardless, we were going to put up a fight. We wouldn't allow Bull to hold a city right on our borders - the mere idea of such a thing was offensive to our principles!

A combined force of Persian and Roman units gathered next to the city, including many siege units. Unfortunately for him, Bull wasn’t intelligent enough to realise that his stack was doomed against a stack of siege units and melee units, so he parked his stack in Pompeii for the next turn. Of course, we were perfectly happy with this, as it allowed us to mow through the stack with very few losses, thanks to all those siege units and city raider units.



I’ve always liked that tactic – if there’s a formidable stack approaching, allow the enemy to take a city, then bash them using your city raider promotions to their full advantage. Often your units will be far more powerful against your enemy when they’re inside the city than when they’re in the open field! This works surprisingly well against many human players in multiplayer games too (all but the best strategists), as well as the AI.

In the rest of the world, while all these battles in our lands were going on, some interesting events were taking place. Ragnar/Saladin made peace with Peter/Isabella, apparently having had enough of the war between them. Justinian generated a Great General, then in 1310 AD captured the Russian city of St Petersburg. Things were looking very bad for Peter, with all these core cities of his being captured.



Sitting Bull continued to harass us with various stacks near Pompeii and Herculaneum, but Sis now had a significant enough offensive force ready to respond that he made short work of any of Bull’s units that got too close.





Meanwhile, the war between England and Germany/Celtia was continuing, and in 1345 AD Liz got herself a Great General. Clearly a lot of fighting was going on down there on the English peninsula, even though we couldn’t see it happening.

In 1345 AD, Sis also managed to get a Great General – his fourth so far! The next turn, he generated a Great Engineer in Rome. We already had a Great Engineer which we were saving for Mining Inc., so this second Great Engineer could be put to use however we wanted. We decided it would be best to use him to rush the Statue of Liberty, especially since we were getting pressure from Willem/Huayna for Democracy (they had beaten us to Constitution by several turns).

Sis finally continued on the invasion of Sury’s lands in 1350 AD – he had paused for the last century or so due to Bull’s constant pressure on Pompeii and Herculaneum. His first target was a squeezed-in coastal city of Sury’s (which bore the same name as his former capital).



On the other side of the world, Peter managed to get himself a Great General, although it was dubious whether that would help him to stop his empire’s demise this late in the war. Next turn, we had news that was closer to home: Liz’s city of Hastings had been captured by the Germans. It looked like Liz had finally been pushed past her limits with the pressure of two nations attacking her simultaneously, and so the English empire was starting to crumble. Things weren’t helped much for her next turn, when Ragnar/Saladin decided they wanted a piece of the action, declaring war on Liz/Mansa too.

The next AP vote came up for ending the war with Sury/Bull, and we again prevented it from passing simply by voting against it.



Sis attacked the many defenders in Sury’s tiny coastal city, winning the battles without too many issues. However, he realised as he was about to take the city that he had overextended his troops – his stack had taken damage from all the battles, and Sury had some powerful units nearby that would probably kill many of Sis’s highly-promoted units next turn.



Hence, we decided that it was a good time for peace, especially since war weariness was starting to creep up on our cities. Sis killed the remaining Catapult to capture Sury’s city, and then signed peace with Sury/Bull. All of his units were automatically transferred inside the newly captured city, trapping them from moving for the next 10 turns (or so we thought!).



As a matter of fact, a turn or so later I wanted Sis to gift me his super-medic so that I could build West Point. I figured that if he gifted me Sury’s small coastal city, he could then gift me his super-medic inside the city, and then I’d gift the city and the unit back. (You only need to have had a super-unit at one point in the game to build West Point – quite handy for team play where you can gift units to each other.) However, as it turned out, when Sis gifted the city to me, all of his units were expelled from the city! Presumably this is some bug with team play, because my borders should be friendly to his units and not bump them out. Anyway, this just meant that Sury would easily recapture that small city when we re-declared war – but we’d get it back soon enough, so it was no problem.

In 1375 AD, a Great Artist was born in Persepolis, which I figured would be excellent for another Golden Age for me sometime in the future. On the same turn, we received news that Moscow had been captured by the Byzantines. With this capture, Peter was left with only two cities: one on his home continent, and one across the sea on his teammate Isabella’s continent. Apparently this latest loss finally convinced Peter that he couldn’t win this war he was in – as a couple of turns later, he and Isabella finally signed peace with Shaka/Justinian.

A few turns later, in 1395 AD, we received some truly bizarre news. The most surprising and unexpected declaration of war so far in the entire game occurred:



Presumably Bull must have been the one pushing his teammate for a war declaration, because Sury was certainly in no state to be going off to war! They’d only made peace with us (for about the third time!) half a dozen turns earlier, and if they had any sense at all, they’d realise that we were going to come back for more later. (Especially since we’d just discovered Rifling, and nobody else was even close to Grenadiers yet.) But we were happy – Willem/Huayna could do with being taken down a notch, since they were our closest technological rivals, and Sury/Bull getting weaker was always good. So whatever way, the war worked for us.

Meanwhile, in the far north, we heard news of yet another genius AI move. Roosevelt had completed Versailles in New York – a city exactly 3 tiles away from his capital. You really have to wonder, sometimes.

Using the Great Engineer that had been generated earlier, Persepolis completed the Statue of Liberty in 1410 AD, which brought a very nice boost to our cities. I assigned most of the free specialists in my lands as Priests – Angkor Wat was at last turning out to be quite useful.

1410 AD also brought the news that Sury/Bull were actually having some success in their war, despite us being so dubious. Sury had captured a small Dutch desert-Gold city named Haarlem, while Bull had captured a reasonably-sized Incan coastal city. Haarlem didn’t stay under Sury’s control for long, which was unsurprising, but Bull managed to hold on to his Incan city, eventually absorbing it into his empire.



At the very end of the session, Sury captured another city of Willem’s – again a fairly useless and small one in the desert. Nevertheless, he managed to keep it under his control for quite a number of years.

That brings us nicely to the end of Session VII. Coming up next time: find out what the future holds for Sury/Bull, and discover the fate of the English empire!

Cheers,
- Lord Parkin

 

[dutchfire]

Sury captured another city of Willem’s – again a fairly useless and small one in the desert.

's-Hertogenbosch?

 

[Lord Parkin]

's-Hertogenbosch?

Yep, that's the one. I figured saying "Sury captured another city" was easier than trying to write the name of that one correctly.

 

[dutchfire]

Yep, that's the one. I figured saying "Sury captured another city" was easier than trying to write the name of that one correctly.

I figured that it was 's-Hertogenbosch since you didn't mention the actual name

 

[oyzar]

It doesn't work against humans much... But defending cities with units that will get massacred is of course stupid. Humans raze cities they know they can't keep... It works against bad players, but not against anyway halfway decent...

 

[Lord Parkin]

It doesn't work against humans much... But defending cities with units that will get massacred is of course stupid. Humans raze cities they know they can't keep... It works against bad players, but not against anyway halfway decent...

It's happened in a couple of pitboss games I've played in, and the players it happened to were reasonably decent. Needless to say though, after it happened to them once they quickly learnt their lessons.

Also, if the game has No City Razing on (as some multiplayer games do), razing isn't an option. Of course, I prefer to have this option off myself, so that wars don't last forever. But this option does fix the questionable practice of rushing a huge metropolis with units and utterly destroying it in a single turn, whereas if the city was merely conquered, the victim could easily have recaptured it. (In many of the pitboss games I've played in, it's sort of an unwritten "honourable practice" that people won't raze cities which are very large.)

 

[Lord Parkin]

You may want to consider gifting some military units to LP and let him fight some battles. Unless GG points are team based rather than individual leaders within a team. At some point they will be cheaper for LP even with the Imperialistic bonus from Augustus.

Just to update, we've figured that GG points are definitely linked in teams. My GG threshold has gone up and up even though I haven't actually generated one yet. (Sis has generated about 6 or more at the current point in time - the end of session ten.) I haven't checked, but I suspect it works in the same way as normal Great People in teams - that is, when one team member gets a Great General, their threshold goes up by the usual amount, while their teammate's threshold goes up by half that amount.

So it's probably more efficient for Sis to keep getting those Great Generals, although I'm certainly not going to hold back on my own wars if I'm close to generating one.

 

[Yesod]

I'm fairly sure that you're just talking about the "custom game" screen, which lists all of the AI players as being at "Noble" level. This is a badly worded screen, and the difficulty columns for the AI players probably shouldn't have been put in there at all. Rest assured that by altering the human player's difficulty to a higher level, the AI do get their advantages (such as cheaper production and cheaper research).

Nope, MP AI is always noble. It actually changes in a custom game screen, I promise I'm not ******ed. You're probably playing against noble AIs.