Superslug-A pacifist attempt at the HOF

[superslug]

I've decided to abandon this map and start over from scratch. The problem is not the map, but my playstyle. There are several "errors" I'm aiming to correct:
1) The Pyramids. I still plan on building these, but I'm want to make sure my Golden Age is triggered after I've gotten out of Despotism.
2) Government. Republic proves to be far too costly given my opening sequence, and Feudalism has turned me off too. Since I don't want to make Artemis and the Oracle obsolete too soon, I abandoned research in the early Middle Ages this first try. This left me with some cash/revenue which I'd like to use to rush Settlers, but Feudalism is pop rushing.
3) Research. I am going to aggressively research this time rather than kick back and eat completely off the huts. I'll focus on the bottom branc of the tree since this leads to the Oracle, Artemis and Monarchy.
4) Workers. It quickly occured to me this past game I was roading tiles that would have eventually had cities after the expansion phase but during the fill in phase. These were wasted worker turns in many cases.
5) Settlers. I sent about a dozen more east than I needed. This next game I plan on taping sheets of graph paper together on a big foam board and plotting out with a pen when tiles already have a settler assigned to go to them. I should be able to grab territory faster this way...

Once I have a game save that meets these criteria (plus a minimum of two four turn settler factories) I'll update this thread with my information.

 

[nihil8r]

why dont you spend some time making an actually GOOD start position? that 5 cow town was made in like 20 tries.

by the way, i abandoned the 5 cow start location in like 500 bc. if you want that 4000 bc save, you could have it. it's a PTW game however. i abandoned the game because of events in the game, so if you or anyone else wants it ... 5 cows ... all beef patties ...

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by nihil8r
why dont you spend some time making an actually GOOD start position? that 5 cow town was made in like 20 tries.

I do! I rejected over 200 maps over 5 hours before I accepted the last one. I didn't have any 5 cow towns, but I did have a trio of four-turn settler factories and a pair of two turn worker factories. These were all in addition to a two turn worker factory and the three towns that built the Pyramids, Artemis and the Oracle.

Originally posted by nihil8r
by the way, i abandoned the 5 cow start location in like 500 bc. if you want that 4000 bc save, you could have it.

My quest has to be conducted in Conquests as Artemis is the hingepoint of my strategy. Besides, HOF maps have to be randomly generated, so I couldn't possibly play yours and have it qualify.

I do appreciate the offer though!

 

[Takeo]

roading tiles that will have a future city is not all that bad. if a settler sent there is within the 3-tile move, then it will still be able to plant down. versus moving into an unroaded tile and waiting until the next turn to settle.

 

[superslug]

That's a very valid and thought provoking point, Takeo. That, strangely had never occured to me.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by Artofcybermars
I think going chieftain is the only viable choice you have.

I did just just that back in vanilla Civ3 with England on a small, 80% archipelago map. I used an ICS build, went for the Collosus (for my GA), and settled like no tomorrow. Beelined to Map Making (for the Great Lighthouse). Domination without a single shot fired. Of course, I didn't play for score, though.

 

[pelmeister]

To overcome the problem that once all the land was used up that was it, I reckoned the solution was cultural assimilation. I just tried the same approach using Babylon in vanilla.

I'm up to 1390AD and obviously winning hands down. However, two problems have emerged. One is that I'm actually doing too well on the culture side and with 40,000 culture points and 700+ new points per turn (and rising rapidly), the game will be over soon. The other is that I didn't score a lot of points early on, which is hampering me now, as I was keen to get lots of temples and libraries before 10AD, when I should have been building settlers.

Having said that, the flipping is great. I have gone for an octopus style territory development program, so have lots of AI cities either fully, mostly or partially surrounded. I get one flip every three turns. Corruption is dire but who cares about that at chieftain level. If this level of flipping continued after all of the land was used up, it would make the end-game bearable.

Even so the game is too excruciatingly dull to repeat, so my conclusion is that I could have got HoF as Babylon if (1) I hadn't built temples early on, instead built settlers (2) was willing to sell cultural items to keep the total down (whilst continuing to build them in border cities). Babylon is so good at culture development that I am sure I could have considerable cultural assimilation without having tons of culture points from 1000+ year old buildings. (3) spread the wonders around different cities so that I'm not at risk of a 20k victory

One thing that you are clearly right about, you must go after luxuries. Indeed my territory layout reflects luxury identification, capture and then expansion in a straight line back to HQ. I've got all eight. Four from discovery, three from border square assimilation (rushing a temple) and one from city assimilation. What I'm not so sure about is luxury trading. I have tons of luxuries, but do not want the AI so indebted to me that it attacks, at least not yet. Technically I am very powerful but I have many newly establishged and undefended cities on borders building temples, so would be hurt by an attack, and it is not as if any AI civ has any real money to trade with either.

 

[Space Cadet]

Well in C3C anyway.

Inspired by Superslug I decided to give this pacifist idea a go. At Chieftain level playing England on a standard continent map with default barbs I have just completed a 100k cultural victory with NO MILITARY UNITS. (a couple of mistakes disbanded as soon as they were produced and each culture flip unit disbanded).

All expansion was done with city builds and culture flips. I traded with all the other civs as much as possible and got to republic and the democracy asap. I spent all my income on science, buildings and a cash reserve - there is loads of money when you have no military.

The score was rubbish (618) with a 100k victory in 1990 hence no HOF post. (I was aiming for a 20K win and the 100K surprised me.)

Still it can be done so the next one will be on more of an eye on the score

 

[superslug]

@pelmeister: You're very correct in the difficulty being finding the right balance between culture and expansion. That's why I'm relying on the Temple of Artemis. One city takes care of the culture while everyone else builds Settlers.

@Space Cadet: WELCOME TO CFC! I'm flattered to have been an inspiration, but to be honest you took it a step further. I am building military units, just not attacking with them.

By the way, there's plenty of Standard map size slots left, so that game would potentially qualify for the HOF.

 

[superslug]

Well, after several weeks of false starts I finally have one I can continue with. I've got multiple settler and worker factories, and most importantly got out of Despotism and into Monarchy before completion of the Pyramids. While it doesn't show on the pic, the Temple of Artemis will be finished in ten turns, with the Forbidden Palace not long after.http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/pyramidcompletion.jpg

 

[superslug]

The Temple of Artemis has been completed:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/toacompletion.jpg

I've made contact with 6 of the 8 AI and have ROP's with all of them. I can't get gpt out of them, but that's not a shocker given that it is Chieftain. I do suck all their available treasury out though whenever renewals come up. As you can see by the screenshot, I'm not researching, so all money is being spent on cash rushing Settlers in the corrupt cities.

Speaking of cities, I have 46. That's not typically good for this date/map, but I'm pacing them out 5 tiles apart. I also have 28 Settlers en route to more locations and 60+ workers doing hardly anything but building roads. I've got at least four groups workers leapfrogging on long distance roads.

I also have five luxuries within my borders, three of which are networked.

EDIT: After consulting with the victory condition screen, I have 9% of the world's territory and 56% of the population.

 

[superslug]

300ad: Between temple induced border expansions and a settler rush, I've gone from 9% of the domination limit up to 22% in 150 years. Despite dropping cities all over the place, the number of active settlers has increased from 28 to 53. Cash rushing them in lieu of research or anything else is really paying off.

 

[pelmeister]

If you can make sure as many people are as happy as possible, you should start to see the points score accelerate from here

 

[superslug]

Very true pelmeister. I'm saving construction of marketplaces until the milk phase, but I've got four luxuries networked and will have a fifth in several turns. The free temple/granary in every town helps a lot. I even decided rather "late" to try and build the Oracle.

In regards to the actual point total, I'm afraid I haven't looked at it yet, although I should just out of curiousity. I'm more focused though on getting up to the Domination limit ASAP.

 

[Artofcybermars]

Keep it rolling super. did you find the map with Moonsinger's and Dianthus wonder utility?

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by Artofcybermars
did you find the map with Moonsinger's and Dianthus wonder utility?

No, I'm afraid I generated this one the old fashioned way after about ten days of ctrl-shift-q and poking around the starting terrain.

As it stands, I haven't even bothered looking up the Domination limit yet, I'm just going by the percentage on the Victory screen introduced in Conquests. So, I'm afraid I don't know how many tiles I'll procure.

The starting region was just too good to pass up. As a matter of fact, my last save is 4xx a.d. and I've already gotten to 33%, so I'm halfway to the limit, and that's with almost 70 settlers now en route.

EDIT: I am however planning on using Moonsinger/Dianthus' lovely program to start generating maps for my next game already. Eman's Monarch score has been sitting there far too long, and if Darkness doesn't take it down, I'm going to try (or at the very least beat my current Monarch HOF rank).

 

[Darkness]

Originally posted by superslug
I am however planning on using Moonsinger/Dianthus' lovely program to start generating maps for my next game already. Eman's Monarch score has been sitting there far too long, and if Darkness doesn't take it down, I'm going to try (or at the very least beat my current Monarch HOF rank).

Then the ball is in your court, 'cause my game will be well short of Eman's score. Still got 95 turns to go, but I got tangled up in the scenario's in conquests, so it may be a while before I finish the game....

 

[superslug]

Hopefully I'll get to my next game soon. Since all I'm building are workers and settlers, I enabled build previous unit and disabled ask for build orders after unit construction. It sped up my turns considerably, although it won't help me once I hit the milk phase...

I'm really anticipating my next game already too. I'm fascinated by what I'm trying now, but this whole not killing the AI thing is really starting to aggravate me.

 

[pelmeister]

culture flips was the only way I found it bearable

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by pelmeister
culture flips was the only way I found it bearable

I know exactly what you mean. I haven't had any yet, but I don't think it'll be long. I'll post a screenshot later today that'll show just how hard I'm trying to "take over" some Aztec cities...