The Hall of Players

[Pangaea]

Ooof! That's pretty unlucky. Some symbolic meaning in a medic losing out to a near-dead archer I guess.

Glancing at the table, a lot of games are pretty darn good and one can't really sleepwalk to beating them. But they're possible to beat too with focused play and a good map and leader. Some of the Inca games, particularly high-level early conquest... no so much. Having a conquering unit on T0, resourceless, means you can play any map, and get going right away. That advantage is simply unmatched by any other leader.

 

[Pangaea]

Typical. Trying another game and boy did it get payback. Across three warriors I won one round against a warrior. Game over. For once it looked like a very good map too

 

[elitetroops]

That happens a lot. When warrior rushing you just have to be prepared to try many starts, as the first battles tend to be a bit risky.

 

[Pangaea]

True, but that was pretty darn bad luck, heh. In the current attempt (true, I've tried many, and have played a couple fairly far, but never quite satisfied) I invaded France and stole a worker. Then somehow he got out a warrior although he only had 25 hammers invested at size 1. Maybe that pesky era bonus again, I don't know. Found it odd as it's usually correct early on. Anyway, had to cease-fire and bugger off, but at least I got a worker out of it.

Getting bad memories from trying to get a start back in the G-Major 144 (?), where you not only need luck with non-hills, non-metal AIs, Mansa not too close, RNG, but also horse/copper nearby - really in the capital BFC. Otherwise the start was too slow. Meant sooooo maaaaaaany failed attempts. I remember being overly frustrated, and same with Seraiel. Think we were a pretty grumpy bunch

 

[Pangaea]

Played into the wee hours yesterday and think the present attempt is the best of the three where early warrior rushing didn't fail. Oracled CS and got GLH quite early, stone hooked up and beginning to build Mids. Marble in 3rd ring of a secondary city, but at least it's present (it wasn't in another game). 3 capitals captured. Will try to play out this one, or at least see how I fare. Need to REX much more, but I quite like this map so far. Got free Sailing too, which helped a ton.

So long since I played Marathon, and it takes some getting used to, but at least the first 200 or so turns are quite manageable. As always, the tricky thing is getting a Great Engineer, so just gotta cross my fingers and hope for a somewhat lucky one. PHI really helps here, which is one reason why I chose Liz.

 

[elitetroops]

So you are playing marathon, space, prince or below? Aiming for a BC launch?

 

[Pangaea]

Yes. 500BC

Edit: The game is Prince Marathon Tiny btw, so it would be nice if others didn't target it, seeing as I spend quite many hours on these darn maps. Not really sure how I'm doing compared to the currently #1 game, but hopefully ahead of the curve.

Just wish Mansa was useful. Dumb brick spent 50+ turns building Artemis while at 1 city. Over 200 turns, and he still has one city. At this rate, I'll have to research every single tech myself.


Oh lordy, I see that game was done in 4 hours. How the hump is that even possible?!

 

[elitetroops]

I wouldn't expect any help from AI on Prince. With Mansa, if you kept feeding him techs to direct his research path, then maybe he could help with a trade or two, but I wouldn't count on it.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I wouldn't expect any help from AI on Prince.

Generally you would expect Mansa to at least research IW / Monarchy / Construction for you on Prince, probably not much more than that though unless you're really lucky.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm not worried about English dominance - there are always going to be stronger Leaders

It is never going to be perfect--there will always be some Leaders whose Traits and Unique Unit/Building will give them advantages in certain situations.

I suppose that we could go out of our way to use inferior Leaders, but I'm not really on board with feeling the need to do so--I would recognize someone's achievement for doing well despite an unfavourable Leader selection, but I'd still appreciate an achievement that was made with a Non-Incan-but-otherwise-favourable Leader selection.

I just want to knock the Incans of the top spot then I will be happy!

The flip side of the argument is that if all of the other Leaders had an equal amount of #1 victories as each other, it would take the most possible effort to achieve this goal. Having another Leader being relatively high in the rankings actually makes this goal easier to achieve. As cheap as it may feel, one alternative approach is just to play a lot of games with the #2 Leader, thereby artificially knocking the Incans off of their top spot. However, I prefer how we've chosen to publish the statistics that display the trend in Incan #1 victories, so that we can encourage explicitly targeting removing some of those #1 Incan victories.


I imagine that most people will, most of the time, try to pick relatively favourable conditions for their victories.

I, personally, am content to just not play with the Incans, but beyond that self-imposed restriction, I see nothing wrong with choosing favourable conditions for a given victory. If you can "divine" aka "figure out" the ideal conditions for your chosen victory, all of the power to you (except for when you choose the Incans, which, to me, is like playing on Developer Cheat Mode).


As for Warrior rushing, it really is hit-or-miss, so by taking that approach, you'll probably only end up with a mediocre map, on average. But, when it's successful and you get one or more AI capitals early on, this fact can help to balance a mediocre map.

In other words, if I had a great starting area, I'd probably forego the Warrior rush and use my advantage (Gems or Gold in the big fat cross) to try to find a Strategic Resource or even to self-tech Archery. Meanwhile, if I had a not-so-great start, I'd be more willing to try risky play and if it failed, I wouldn't mind abandoning the map, but if it worked, then it might turn the game into a "keeper."

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I'm playing the Large map now and had something really funny happen - have upped the Domination limit to 76% via killing every original AI (only AI left is a former vassal of Hannibal) and setting up 16 vassals. One of them is Asoka but both his cities are under enormous cultural pressure due to Sushi. I have avoided Mass Media so the AP is still active and a vote came up to assign one of his cities to me which succeeded! He was left with one city and yet again the assign city vote came up, I was sure he would Defy but he didn't he simply voted No. The vote was successful so his last city was assigned to me and he's dead!!

More evil AP shenaigans from me! Playing an Espionage game, two normal Legendary cities were London and, er, Paris . Started another war with De Gaulle and took a city of his on our border, then took peace and gifted him my "Spy City" with 25 stationary spies in it. The Americans took his only other city. Next turn I spread the culture until I run out of EPs (had slightly misjudged it), whilst I was waiting for another Great Spy an AP resolution popped up giving me the change to Assign Spy City back to me!! I voted yes, so did Lincoln and for the second time in my Civ career I killed a Civ via the AP! Won an Espionage victory a few turns later!

 

[Ozbenno]

and for the second time in my Civ career I killed a Civ via the AP!

Well done, I've never had that happen!

 

[SittinDown]

The game is Prince Marathon Tiny btw, so it would be nice if others didn't target it, seeing as I spend quite many hours on these darn maps. Not really sure how I'm doing compared to the currently #1 game, but hopefully ahead of the curve.

I'm making a run at Prince / Normal / Large space. I'm not trying for a BC run - but I am trying out as many of the new techniques as I can. Current record is 1802 AD. Should beat that comfortably without having to run many starts. I've got one now at ~800 BC with GLH, 8 cities, stone, and marble. Capital is on PH marble. Using Joao. Should be in good shape.

(Edit: I had to bail on the start I talked about here, because I started it on the wrong difficulty level.)

 

[Noble Zarkon]

So interesting start I just generated via MapFinder!

Spoiler :

 

[elitetroops]

Not a bad start at all.

Warrior SE. If he sees no new food, I'm moving. Probably settling 2N or 3N depending on what settler sees on first NW move. It takes a very long time until capital would be ready to work more than 2-3 gold, especially with only floodplains and one clam, so leaving a few of them for another city is not that bad. Pigs are more important early on. The blue circle also suggests we might kill some seafood with SIP. Settling location also depends on your goal with the game. If space, then I might be more inclined to settle 2N than 3N as it looks to have stronger long term potential. If goal is some quick military victory, then I wouldn't see myself ever working more than 2 gold and give more value to food and forests.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Not a bad start at all.

Indeed

It's a Cultural game so reasonably long term, without more info I'm leaning 3N, a second city can pick up the seafood and other Gold.

 

[Pangaea]

Errrrrr.... what??? I'm in the tech overview screen. Right click on a leaderhead. War horns sound? I've done that a million times before and then get up the 'conversation' with the leader. WTF is going on?!?

Now the entire game hangs in the balance because of a frickin' stupid bug I've never encountered before? Stupid game!!!

And here I was thinking I could perhaps win in a non-military way because we were friendly. Not quite so friendly now

Moderator Action: Snipped text to comply with language rules --NZ
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Kaitzilla]

Errrrrr.... what??? I'm in the tech overview screen. Right click on a leaderhead. War horns sound? I've done that a million times before and then get up the 'conversation' with the leader. WTF is going on?!?

Now the entire game hangs in the balance because of a frickin' stupid bug I've never encountered before? Stupid game!!!

And here I was thinking I could perhaps win in a non-military way because we were friendly. Not quite so friendly now

That is really weird.
Were you holding down ALT when you right-clicked the leaderhead?

Also, didn't know right clicking in the tech overview screen brought up the leader to talk.

I did something similar once.
left click + right click at the same time on the leader in the scoreboard in the bottom right is automatic war too.

 

[Pangaea]

Were you holding down ALT when you right-clicked the leaderhead?

Nope, wasn't holding down any buttons at all, except right-click to bring up the leaderhead window. The only thing I can think of is that the game has messed up something when I changed workspace (I'm playing on Linux). I don't need to hold down any buttons when going back to the game, but I've no idea what else it could have been. Incredibly weird. And it naturally created a rather 'sticky' situation

I know it's possible to do that with Ctrl-click (or is it Alt-click?), which is useful when you want to wage war on an AI that won't talk to you. Therefore I am always careful with stuff like that, and only use the mouse itself when dealing with various UI elements.

 

[Pangaea]

So close Having run out of BOTM games to run, I tried for HoF instead. Only got one free tech from a hut, but it was Writing. Awesome! Expanding and going well, Mansa is on the right side, not too close, and is even helping me out with picking sensible techs. My capital has double food, double gold and three floodplains. Kinda sick for not having run MapFinder. Got Stonehenge in a secondary city (which happened to grab another gold, woot). Iron popped in that city too, on a mine I had already built, so that was nice. I'm building Oracle there, and ofc going for Civil Service.

But what is this. Joao is building something big in Oporto, and he has already built the Great Wall. Oh, and his worker is chopping there. Won't be 150 so even if it is Oracle I can whip it next turn and beat him.

You know the drill. He somehow got it, maybe he whipped that same turn and was somehow able to do that, I don't know. And he picked MC, which I teched to trade CoL with Mansa, and Mansa somehow got that the very same turn too. So even if Joao hadn't magically gotten 60 or thereabouts in that last turn, I wouldn't have been able to get CS anyway since Mansa had CoL which I was going to trade MC for. (I changed from CoL to MC when I got tech view on him and he went for CoL for his FOURTH religion).

Abandon game. Okay, it might have been good anyway, but I just hate having stuff like that happen. It makes me doubt the whole prospect. And I was intending to go to space.


Rolled a few new ones, and on Rainforest this time. Terrible with all the jungle, but the food is better. Manually rolled 10-ish maps, and I can see both silver and gems in the start. Need to move one tile south to grab both, then settle. Woot, a hidden banana. Cool. Let's hope nobody beats me to Oracle by one stinking turn this time.


Sorry for the random rambling. I know the thread had been dead for a year.