Something Different (SSE/EE Immortal)

[obsolete]

The Future Era!


1919 (Continued)

And what else do we do this year?

We backstab our old friend Caesar! Tadahhh!!

And here we begin, with 3 separate stacks of death preparing to knock out 3 cities in a single turn. Should be devastating to the AI.

Pssssssssssst…
Look at this victory screen. He thinks he can actually launch and win the space-race. Problem is, you need to actually have a capital for THAT to happen.

Spoiler :

* And we gain yet ANOTHER Great General

Note: Capturing that city of Antium, gave us some useless wonders:

The Pyramids
The Kremlin
Mausoleum of M. (ok, ALMOST useless)

*** And while I just remembered!
Remember that city that was gifted to me from Willem when he vassaled? I forgot to mention it, that one actually had the Hollywood and an absorbed GE. So now you know!

 

[obsolete]

1920
Ouffff. That 3-pronged attack didn’t go so well. Turns out… stupid me, I forgot to realize that the Romans had something like 50 units stacked in there. Whooops! So it took more than a single wave of our SoD to finished, but I got the job done. Unfortunately I had to abandon taking the third city out, as I needed to combine 2 SoD’s in 2 turns just to break that fortress.

But it was worth it, because inside Ravenna we found:
SY (Yeah!)
Great Library (booo)
Space Elevator (Yeah!)

 

[obsolete]

1921
Well, finally some split forces ended up taking out that 3’rd city I was planning. And it seems my vassal Isabel is off roaming about with 1 lousy out-of-date tank, and 1 artillery unit. Whoopie!

Note: That 3’rd city was Neapolis, which contained:
The Three Gorges Dam!

-ni

1925
WTH is this? Great-Scientist pops in my capital. Again, a 1% chance-event to happen, and I get the scientist instead of a spy. Go figure…

* And.. BOOM! We roll right into Rome. He was probably still busy working on finishing that last space-ship part, instead of drafting and using his capital to save his ass. No surprise the AI is so easy to win against militaristically…

And inside we find:
Scotland Yard
Taj Mahal
The Pentagon (yeah!)
University of S.
Creative Constructions

1 GP
1 GE

* And then… we make this deal with him:
Capitulation
World Map
240 g.
8g/turn

-ni

1929
A Dutch passenger flight has crashed in our territory near Delhi.

Lets take 1000 spy points against him instead of +1 diplo.
-ni

1931
I keep sabotaging Rome’s space-ship. I decided at this point to go for a time-victory, JUST BECAUSE I CAN! Since I never did it before.

Spoiler :

 

[obsolete]

1944
A GE pops in my capital. Hmmm, was that on purpose or deliberate? I think I must have switched from spies over to engineers now, as the game is effectively over.
-ni

1950
A Great Prophet pops too.
Also, I’ve been stockpiling tones of nukes. But already I’m feeling rather bored, and I don’t know if I can fully wait till turn 2050 before my patience runs out. I think I’ll just give up and start nuking the world soon.

* BTW, I ended up using that GP to build a shrine, just for the hell of it.
-ni

1953
Me and my vassals decide to declare war on Catherine. This is just too much fun to not bother.
-ni

1959
We took a few cities, and now receive another Great General.
-ni

1960
Moscow falls. Inside we see we gain:

SY
Stonehenge
Chichen Pizza
Statue of Zeus
1 GP

 

[obsolete]

1961
And now, we cut a deal:

Capitulation
World Map
190 g.
7g/turn

So there you have it… our whole continent is vassalized to me.

* Ohh, and by the way, I decided to use that G-Scientist from earlier to crease the Ethanol corporation, just to prevent other AI’s from getting more than their fare share.

* And one more thing! I insta-declare on Qui for the hell of it, and get all my vassals to fight for me (yea right, since when do vassals fight well?)

I definitely don’t want to wait for a time victory by now… I just want to nuke everyone until I win through diplomatic voting.

So, lets Nuke & Nuke & Nuke & Nuke.

Unfortunately.. We keep getting shot down.. And shot down.. And shot down. Never fails, seems the AI always has some modifier against the human player on this level (despite the coders tell me the AI plays fair & square on interceptions!) Hmm!

I kept sending volleys of 6 or more in one shot, and they all keep getting shot down (just about!). However, I WAS able to get one go off to hit a city here. And also by a miracle, one ICBM had also hit Beijing which had originally a population of 21, now it is at 16. But keep sending ICBMs anyway.

 

[obsolete]

1963
Alright, since nuking just isn’t working… (his intercept is almost perfect), I decided to just declare war on Khan as well, since he doesn’t have the Star-Wars project yet.

Ok… so finally things are going better!

1964
WTH!!!

Another Bug??

No ICBM defense for Khan, but LOOK AT THIS! Somehow, I got my ICBM shot down on his city here too, by Qin???

That can’t happen, it’s not even HIS city, it’s Khans. Boy, is immortal biased against the human player or what?

Can someone explain this one to me? I don’t know how many flaws there are in the nuking logic, but there definitely seems to be a few, and none benefit the human player that’s for sure.

Anyhow, just keep Nuking and Nuking.. Eventually some will get through.

Spoiler :

 

[obsolete]

1965
Unbelievable. Qin launches 6 tacticals, and they all hit Isabel. Every one…

Now why can’t I protect MY vassal with my SDI? Fair should be fair right?
-ni

1968
Welp, here we are! Diplomatic victory!

And as you can see, my Vassal Isabella just got nuked to death here by Qin. Yup…. HE had no problems avoiding intercepting, NOR getting past interception. Though I think the Romans were table to stop TWO tactics from him in a past round.

What a sham!

But alas, we won so that’s what counts…

And we did it... Without a light-bulb or building a kiddie-cottage!

 

[timmy827]

1963


1964
WTH!!!

Another Bug??

No ICBM defense for Khan, but LOOK AT THIS! Somehow, I got my ICBM shot down on his city here too, by Qin???

That can’t happen, it’s not even HIS city, it’s Khans. Boy, is immortal biased against the human player or what?

Can someone explain this one to me? I don’t know how many flaws there are in the nuking logic, but there definitely seems to be a few, and none benefit the human player that’s for sure.

Anyhow, just keep Nuking and Nuking.. Eventually some will get through.

Area to intercept goes by cultural radius? That's only a guess, I have very limited experience with nuking. Were any of those that hit Izzy in cities within the limits of your culture (tiles where you have any culture, not necessarily a majority)?

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Good game. But could have used more pictures.

 

[r_rolo1]

IIRC if the fallout radius hit a tile ( and units too? Not sure, but I think so ) of a player with the SDI, the nuke can be intercepted....

 

[obsolete]

Hmm. Well it definitely seems then that Firaxis needs to clean up their piss-poor documentation. In fact, a lot of what is currently in the civopedia is plain out wrong many times to boot.


But for now...


Ending Credits..

Second time I saw this on immortal:

Spoiler :

Some more info:

Spoiler :

Copyrights go to:

Initial AutoSave

Spain Capitulates

1968

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Area to intercept goes by cultural radius?

The mechanics are in CvUnit::nuke(), and the supporting code. That code assembles all nuke victims; CvUnit::isNukeVictim names as victims the owner(s) of all affected plots, and all teams who have combat units within the range of the nuke. Which ever victim has the best intercept chance, that's the victim who defends. Did Qin have a unit in Khan's city? Had you sprinkled units through your vassals' cities, could your SDI have come to the rescue?

Chance of intercept looks like it ought to be 75% intercept from SDI, reduced by 50% for the evade chance of the nuke, is 37% chance of wasting the nuke (integer math), plus or minus the rounding error in RNG??

 

[obsolete]

VoU, this is openning a whole new mess of exploits. So I wonder.... IF I had put a lousy barbarian in each of Isabel's cities, would that suddenly make my SDI DEFEND her? Very interesting exploits if this is so.

BTW, IIRC, tactics should get 50% chance to evade SDI while ICBMs only get 25%. Though ICBMs are supposed to do more damage, but then that has been argued back and forth. Not to mention there's been some nuke code changes in the last patch, which was not properly modified in the civpedia (again the civpedia is wrong on this). The shelters in particular have been drastically changed.

BTW, I know in pre-patch there was a rediculous issue of NOT being able to nuke a city because some moron had a spy sitting in it. At least THAT was changed but I wonder, if in fact maybe a spy in a city will cause the owner of that spy to engage his SDI to protect that city the odd time, even if it is a city of his opponent! haha.

 

[reknaw]

If that's the case, would putting a single unit in each of your vassal's cities ensure that you attempt block nukes dropped in their territory?

EDIT: cross post

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

BTW, IIRC, tactics should get 50% chance to evade SDI while ICBMs only get 25%. Though ICBMs are supposed to do more damage, but then that has been argued back and forth. Not to mention there's been some nuke code changes in the last patch, which was not properly modified in the civpedia (again the civpedia is wrong on this). The shelters in particular have been drastically changed.

I'm surprised that you are hard on the Civpedia - it's been my understanding that the data is taken from the same XML files that are used to define the units, buildings, etc. No promise that the text descriptions must match the game play, but the data ought to....

It appears now that I misread the XML files last night: the important property would by iEvasionProbability, and the base value for ICBMs seems to be zero, rather than 50% (which is right for Tac Nukes - see Civ4UnitInfos.xml).

Nuke damage is coded in CvPlot - I don't find any evidence there that the different flavors of nuke act differently.

 

[ShredZ]

Hey Obsolete, just wondering about your methods to stealing all those techs. Im playing a similar game right now and was wondering: are you bringing 10+ spies into an enemy city ( i think you mentioned seperate stacks ), and then stealing 3-4 techs, then maybe a counter-espionage, maybe a change religion/civic and then regather all your spies, wait 10+ turns, and do it all over again? OR are you taking in 5+ spies, stealing 1 tech, and retreating?

Also, how far behind in techs do you think is too far? I think in my game Im at least 4-6 techs behind, maybe more just before I steal 4 techs to catch up a bit...

 

[UncleJJ]

I read somewhere, sorry can't remember where, that having many spies stacked in a city is a bad move. If one spy is detected the chances of other spies getting detected increases for at least that turn.

Now if that is true it would mean spreading your spies out and using them over a several turns would be more effective than concentrating them and using them repeatedly in the same city. Obsolete, did you observe that sort of behaviour?

Also you did not go into much detail about what you did to make stealing techs more effective, such as stealing from closer cities, trade routes and religions. Obviously your spies waited 5 turns and you spent as much on espionage as possible to get the EP spending discount but what else did you do?


I can't download your savegames, could you check the links?

 

[sterben]

Tacked on to ShredZ and UncleJJ's questions, I was wondering if you spent the time/eps to spread culture before stealing multiple techs, or if you bypassed that entirely.

 

[obsolete]

Hey Obsolete, just wondering about your methods to stealing all those techs. Im playing a similar game right now and was wondering: are you bringing 10+ spies into an enemy city ( i think you mentioned seperate stacks ), and then stealing 3-4 techs, then maybe a counter-espionage, maybe a change religion/civic and then regather all your spies, wait 10+ turns, and do it all over again? OR are you taking in 5+ spies, stealing 1 tech, and retreating?

Also, how far behind in techs do you think is too far? I think in my game Im at least 4-6 techs behind, maybe more just before I steal 4 techs to catch up a bit...

It all depends on their SB mostly. I they have it, then usually I prefer to do concentrated attacks for brief moments then pull away. If they don't I'll leave just 1 or 2 there.

I don't think 4-6 techs is a disaster, if you can target the tree in a way that you can try to selectively chose ones early that you can trade for others at some point.

 

[obsolete]

I read somewhere, sorry can't remember where, that having many spies stacked in a city is a bad move. If one spy is detected the chances of other spies getting detected increases for at least that turn.

Now if that is true it would mean spreading your spies out and using them over a several turns would be more effective than concentrating them and using them repeatedly in the same city. Obsolete, did you observe that sort of behaviour?

Also you did not go into much detail about what you did to make stealing techs more effective, such as stealing from closer cities, trade routes and religions. Obviously your spies waited 5 turns and you spent as much on espionage as possible to get the EP spending discount but what else did you do?


I can't download your savegames, could you check the links?

The savegames seem weird. I guess the server doesn't recognize it as binary, and instead is letting it DL as text. I'll try to zip it and then see if that works.

The only other thing I did, which goes without saying, is I kept sabotaging the SB a lot.

BTW, sometimes I'd go a few rounds with no spies detetected, and then suddenly 6 all disapear on me. So it would seem that could be bugged, but it could just be human bias-observation. Because also sometimes I just have a couple dissapear. You are eventually going to have a whole bunch go just due to bad luck.

HOWEVER! One thing I have observed TIME AND TIME AND TIME AND TIME AND TIME AGAIN... is if your first attempt to steal a tech fails, (or sabotage), EVEN if you are 75% to be successful, your next trial will be less than 50% to be successful for sure. In fact, I constantly go on a whole string of failures when the first 75% trial fails. I used to wonder if it's just bad luck or human biased perception. But it just seems to ALMOST never fail. It's got me to the point where I cringe when the first attempt fails, and usually wait till the next turn comes around, because I don't want to go on another 6-failed trial streak, all as a 75% favourite.



I'm not saying the second attempt wont work, but that the odds on average tend to be much less than your indicated chances. NOW MAYBE It is all just a rediculous bad stroke of luck for me and everything is working fine.

It's sort of like, nuking on Immortal. There's supposed to be no bias, but I keep getting the worst of the RNG here no matter how UNBIASSED the coders tell me the game system is.