Superslug Vs Sid

[superslug]

The Middle Ages has some high-culture wonders that still have time to double after a thousand years, but I struggle to build them against competitive AI on Deity. I was able to snag the Knight's Templar early in the age, but the only other one I cared about was Shakespeare's Theater.

It wound up being the only other one I got, but it was worth it. The 8 culture per turn is substantial, but I also wanted to get past the 12 population cap before hospitals. On Emperor and Demigod, I was sometimes able to use palace prebuilds to take advantage of the accelerated AI construction benefits in the Industrial Age. Controlling wonder cascades meant I could build Universal Suffrage, Theory of Evolution, Hoover Dam, and the UN, but only if I ended the previous age right.

A palace rebuild wasn't enough, but doing it in a city with twice that number of people was a different story.

At 800 AD in the above screenshot, I was at 3890 culture overall and generating 55 per turn. I was still hopeful of winning quickly enough to avoid late-game problems, but knowing I'd probably beat the AI to the punch on building the UN was the start of preventing their victories while I sat there and ran out the culture clock.

The next step was making sure I had railroad. I've abandoned several Deity runs for missing on Shakespeare. Getting Steam Power and not having immediate access to coal would be the death of this map.

 

[Spoonwood]

I could easily hit 50 active settlers, each with an escort warrior, and I'd be doing this with just a dozen cities or so established.

Did you have only the minimum number of opponents?

Escort of a warrior for settlers... did you have barbarians on?

I don't think I've ever seen an AI declare war by attacking a settler. Did I even see an AI once attack a city of size 1? I've rarely to extremely rarely used military units to escort settlers.

 

[BlackBetsy]

It likely holds that 75% of the time that a Republic has a better economic position than any other government even with paying higher unit support. I even believe that it probably even holds that for 90%, 93%, and 96% of the turns that people played, Republic would have a stronger economic position than other governments, regardless of how much unit support the player has.

The nice thing about CivAssistII is that it allows you to see this in at the time you are thinking about it.

The Republic is likely not going to be a winner where you (1) have a lot of units relative to (2) a smaller number of towns (not cities); (3) a core that isn't fully roaded for commerce. That's pretty much the definition of the late Ancient Age / early Middle Age for most players.

It's obvious, of course, that when you lose the military police benefits, you disband those units in your non-border cities. I do that 100% of the time when I flip to the Republic, usually on the turn I choose Republic. Still, with a lot of workers, you may be paying unit support costs. Oftentimes this isn't a problem on its own, but at higher levels, it is paired with having to run a pretty high luxury rate since you likely don't have many luxuries in the box, don't have marketplaces built, lose MP benefits, and it is hard to have enough cities which have triple the free unit support.

The Republic is a clear winner, and by the time you can trade with all the AI to get 5+ luxes, it's not even close. There is just a portion of the game where it's tougher to manage, and then it's a question of whether you want to go through a second anarchy and lose 6-8 turns of production again. Let's call it the Republic Misery Period.

Right now in my Histo game I can have 900 units without paying unit support costs, and I have something like 400. The extra commerce, paired with a lux rate, makes my empire very rich.

 

[BlackBetsy]

Did you have only the minimum number of opponents?

Escort of a warrior for settlers... did you have barbarians on?

I don't think I've ever seen an AI declare war by attacking a settler. Did I even see an AI once attack a city of size 1? I've rarely to extremely rarely used military units to escort settlers.

I find the AI on Deity/Sid are likely to engage in crimes of opportunity where if you settle an early city and they happen to have a spearman or warrior or Hoplite right there, they will DOW to kill it.

 

[Spoonwood]

The Republic is likely not going to be a winner where you (1) have a lot of units relative to (2) a smaller number of towns (not cities); (3) a core that isn't fully roaded for commerce. That's pretty much the definition of the late Ancient Age / early Middle Age for most players.

If evaluated in terms of one turn, this sounds plausible. However, if one stays in despotism, then cities can't grow as quickly. Revolting as soon as one learns it enables cities to grow more and thus produce more commerce. Those cities also have greater shield production with an earlier revolution.

 

[superslug]

I've had similar experiences to @BlackBetsy about empty cities on the border being too tempting a target. Without the ability to truly defend myself, I don't want to risk even minor border skirmishes.

I also get demoralized when I grab a bunch of territory only to start seeing it whittled down to culture flips. I wanted as many roaded tiles as possible by the end of Steam Power to maximize my chances of having coal under my feet immediately. The combination of railroad tile bonuses and Communism usually represent the point where I finally start going to war.

During my extended despotism, some of my pumps were taking five, six, to seven turns to grow two population points for the next settler. Squeezing in a warrior between each settler was easy to do, so that factored into the escort decision.

My other consideration was that a settler unit becomes a city that can immediately start producing something of value instead of its own defensive unit. For border cities, that was temples and then libraries I could pop rush. Interior cities would work on more settlers. Even at 30 turns, 30 ICS cities produce a settler per turn. Between an agricultural civ and the Pyramids, I had plenty of potential citizens who would perish rushing things in the far reaches of my empire.

 

[superslug]

 

[Spoonwood]

I also get demoralized when I grab a bunch of territory only to start seeing it whittled down to culture flips.

A few weeks or maybe 2 months ago I looked at one of my spaceship launches with CrpViewer. Taking a look again now, from the looks of it I lost 005 in a cultural flip to the Byzantines in 1300 BC. In 430 AD the Byzantines gained 012 in a cultural flip. The Ottomans gained 008 in a cultural flip in 660 AD.

I think I had 2 cultural flips in the Sid 20k pangea France game. I feel tempted to tell you that cultural flips can get overcome. For sure, they have gotten overcome by someone at some point in time.

I realize some of my comments don't necessarily apply to others, because they use different tactics and not all tactics end up as compatible. But, I do wonder if one might develop a better response to cultural flips than just demoralization.

Cultural flips do enable more science for AIs. So, they might help AIs to learn a technology a turn sooner.

Even at 30 turns, 30 ICS cities produce a settler per turn.

When I read this I started thinking about ICS science specialist farms. But, you whipped in infrastructure instead?

My experience with 20k games consists of almost always running out a cultural build in the industrial era (and some wonders like Battlefield Medicine and the Intelligence Agency end up weak in their shields to culture ratio). With specialist farms, that seems like not as bad of an issue. In my eyes, the basis of a strong 20k game is research.

Also, 2 anarchies in a 20k game!

It's good to see HoF entries with different approaches.

 

[superslug]

I don't think I ever pop-rushed anything in my 20K city. Any city improvements generating culture I'd usually do in one turn by disbanding enough military units, even if it took a lot. It was important to me for Caprica City to be working as much as possible on the next Palace prebuild.

After Shakespeare's, I was able to get Universal Suffrage, ToE, and Hoover in the Industrial Age, along with a number of smaller wonders. In the Modern Age, I got the United Nations, the Internet, and Longevity.

At this point, it was a matter of running out the clock and preventing the AI from achieving win conditions. Conquest was not a threat with four landmasses across the map, and my size alone would prevent Domination. Building the UN and skipping votes ruled out Diplomatic. Even at this point in the game, Caprica City was the clear 20K leader and was leaving every other city in the rear-view mirror. It didn't look like any AI was going to hit 160K, and even they did, it wouldn't have been double the next guy.

That only left Spaceship launches.

My plan was to exterminate everyone on my continent. A dead civ can't build or launch anything. I'd then use espionage to sabotage construction on other continents, repeatedly if necessary. That always carries a high risk of triggering a war, but the AI is so lacking in being able to invade another landmass.

You can see the lower isthmus in the last picture that was one of two keeping the Zulu and Arabs from each other. I didn't want either taking over the other and becoming too powerful. I settled for hitting some Egyptian and Mongol cities in the middle of the continent, where everyone was bumping into each other.

The above picture is the last turn before I traded for Steam Power.

 

[superslug]

@Spoonwood: Any Deity setback could wind up demoralizing me. Given my lack of success on this difficulty, I often wondered if I was still growing as a player or just out of my league.

I'd love to finally get a Sid win, but I also know there's other versions of Civ waiting for me after I'm done with III. This win was extremely validating to me in terms of sticking with this one for a little while longer.

And if anyone's wondering, when I do eventually move up to Civ 5, I'll still be here to keep the lights on.

 

[Spoonwood]

View attachment 716359

That looks like a 60% archipelago map. When I see pictures like this, I realize how different my choices eventually became much different than many other players it seems. All those builds taking over 50 turns! At some point I adopted a rule that captured cities would put out a settlers, a workers, or an artillery type unit. Pretty much as soon I captured them I would change builds. But, yea... I suppose well over 90% of players have builds in captured or highly corrupt areas that take a lot of turns to finish. I'd plant you all some trees and hire some loggers if I could.

A spearmen in a city which is on the entire landmass! Can anyone explain the reasoning for that one? I do believe that there exist many, many players who have some city builds without much thought about how well those builds fit their strategic plans. Almost surely, that's something I have struggled with many, many times over the years.

 

[superslug]

I picked up Hutag in a peace treaty negotiation and then just totally forgot about it.

As far as the temples and libraries taking so many turns, I really only had to wait about 10 or 15 turns before they became shippable.

Funny you should mention the loggers. I had a few stacks of 22+ workers. They could plant trees, chop them, and build a road plus irrigation or mine all in one turn. For a new city, that would be 60 shields in 60 turns.

 

[Spoonwood]

For a new city, that would be 60 shields in 60 turns.

When you wrote that Caprica city was 'rebuilding' instead of 'prebuilding' the Palace, I thought "huh... that's interesting. According to the game, the player does rebuild the palace, when planning the palace as prebuild for something else."

I'm not going to try to think of something interesting though for this more recent typo. You meant 60 shields in 6 turns, or you were writing nonsense...

 

[superslug]

Rebuild was a prebuild typo, which I've fixed, thank you.

The 60 shields in 6 turns thing deserves a better explanation than I provided; I'll try to write that up later with more elaboration.

 

[Spoonwood]

You're welcome.

 

[superslug]

I didn't figure my border cities would get so much attention from my Deity win, but they might have been one of the biggest changes in my approach to the game. As much as I savor my victory, the real story might have been the three previous games that I lost and didn't submit.

In each case, expansion happened, but was then lost. Some cities were attacked before they had defenders; others simply culture-flipped.

The most recent game was a heartbreaker. I was able to build Shakespeare, but coal was underneath a city I *used* to have. By the time I took it back over, the AI had run far away from me.

No longer would my border cities be 1 warrior, 1 settler. The following photos are from a non-HOF game where I perfected my math.

One reason I chose Feudalism is because of the insane unit support available. Be sending out two warriors and three settlers, the border town is immediately population 5.
-Start building a temple
-Disband the second warrior for the first few shields
-Add one worker
-Pop rush the temple

Next up is the library, and this is where the worker stack comes in:
-9 workers plant a forest
-4 chop it
-6 mine the tile (a border city is too corrupt in Feudalism to be productive, but it can be ready for Communism later)

By just the next turn, the temple is complete, and the town already has 10 shields for the library.

Two native forests are chopped. Several tiles are planted and harvested. One worker is added for the final pop-rush.

The new city has a temple and library both done in approximately 10 turns. I hope this clears up what I meant by "60 shields in 6 turns". The city itself barely produced anything, and won't for some time, but the surviving unhappy citizen has a place to find spiritual solace or check out some books.

The worker stack would move on to another border city, and I'd fill the empty spaces later with a second wave of settlers.

 

[Spoonwood]

but the surviving unhappy citizen has a place to find spiritual solace or check out some books.

Reading this gave me hearty laugh! Though, the game says that you have 17,000 people with a temple and a library. Of course many of them won't read or go to the temple though for one reason or another...

 

[Spoonwood]

From another perspective, we have a city of 17,000 people, but only one citizen!

 

[Spoonwood]

From 4000 BC to 2750 BC each turn 50 years
From 2750 BC to 1750 BC each turn 40 years
From 1750 BC to 750 BC each turn 25 years
From 750 BC to 250 AD each turn 20 years
From 250 AD to 1250 AD each turn 10 years
From 1250 AD to 1750 AD each turn 5 years
From 1750 AD to 1950 AD each turn 2 years
From 1950 AD to 2050 AD each turn 1 year

So, it's (1250 / 50) = 25 turns from 4000 BC to 2750 BC.

(1000 / 40) = 25 turns from 2750 BC to 1750 BC.

(1000 / 25) = 40 turns from 1750 BC to 750 BC.

(1000 / 20) = 50 turns from 750 BC to 250 AD.

(1000 / 10) = 100 turns from 250 AD to 1250 AD.

(500 / 5) = 100 turns from 1250 AD to 1750 AD.

(200 / 2) = 100 turns from 1750 AD to 1950 AD.

(100 / 1) = 100 turns from 1950 AD to 2050 AD.

 

[superslug]

Thanks to @Spoonwood for submission #10, I was able to update the HOF. It's nice to see my name officially on a Deity table.