The Hall of Players

[WastinTime]

rt. city culture and tile culture are two different things.

 

[Pangaea]

Fippy is right.
All the plot(tile) culture in the 1st ring (8 tiles) of the gifted city vanishes.
In contrast, the civ receiving the city gets +1 plot culture on the 8 tiles around the city, so they get control unless a 3rd civ has a claim on the tiles.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/plot-culture-mechanics.633767/#post-15392025

It makes gifting cities on the border a real headache because it can take many, many turns to get back control of the tiles in the inner ring peacefully.


The spy bonuses in the gifted city were kept because it is based on city culture.

**Edit**
The plot culture on the city tile itself is also lost.

Thank you, that's an excellent explanation. Fits perfectly with what happened in the game, including the city tile itself. It was roughly 50/50 prior to the gift (there was a major culture battle), and everything just went *poof*

Reading that thread, pretty complex mechanics under the hood.

 

[Pangaea]

Also, I finally discovered something that has been bugging me.
You know how sometimes you steal a worker with Aggressive AI and sometimes the AI won't talk peace no matter what you do?

It turns out that it is due to a Holy City!
I stole a worker from Peter in my latest game and after a few turns I got a cease fire by threatening 1 city (warrior within 2 tiles).

Then 20 turns later after he founded Buddhism, I stole another worker.
A few turns went by, then I got within 2 tiles of one of his cities and he would not sign Cease Fire.

So I threatened 2 cities.
Still, no cease fire.

Then I killed a scout and got a Cease Fire.

So if you are stealing workers, avoid the civs that found a religion, unless you can capture 2 workers + threaten 2 cities, or capture 1 worker + threaten 3 cities.

Been re-reading this GM-137 thread recently. Both fun and frustrating to kinda re-live the whole thing, as majestic as the gauntlet was. Seraiel and I posted... a lot.

Anyway, this post caught my attention and I recalled it when something similar happened in my current game. Funnily with Peter as well. He got a Holy City, and a naughty warrior noticed a worker improving furs. Nabbed him, and ended up next to a city with two archers in it. Sadly one of them attacked and cleaned me out (not even a scratch). Thought I'd be fine with only two archers there, as they rarely attack then, but maybe one of them had been guarding workers earlier. Naturally it was very hard to get peace after that. Managed to corner a scout and kill him, but still no peace. But when I settled a third city, he was willing to sign a cease fire. I've noticed this many times. Can't get peace with one city, but the instant I found another one, they will sign peace. Looks to me like city count is very important for these calculations. In that game, Peter also had 3 cities (founded one briefly before I did), so maybe the human is at a great disadvantage if you have fewer cities than the AI you are at war with?

Actually surprised me that he was willing to peace out in this case, as he had more war success and we had 3 cities each. He killed the warrior+worker, while I only got a scout. Plus he has the holy city. This wasn't with AggAI though, if that matters a lot. Nor did I threaten any cities, because.. well, the warrior died. And it was far away.

Other factors at play there too, like power, but maybe this city count factor is a reason why it's so dangerous to workersteal on Deity and then fail to get a cease fire?

 

[Fippy]

With pop increasing score, they might figure it into power ratings?

 

[elitetroops]

Looking at the code, AI_endWarVal is affected by number of cities, total pop, war success, power rating (ours and their), war plan, potentially financial trouble and if aggressive AI they also take endangered cities in to account (ours and their). I don't see anything about holy cities in there, that must have been a coincidence. If not aggressive AI it doesn't seem to check at all anything about endangered cities or unit locations.

 

[Pangaea]

Interesting. So amount of cities could be important then.

 

[Pangaea]

May not change all that much, but I was totally wrong about that game. Must have been too tired when I stopped playing, and didn't recall correctly. I didn't get peace with Peter at 3 cities (was surprised when I opened the game and saw the war icon). He was willing to talk, and sign peace, but only if he got a city. Maybe I didn't notice at the time. Now, a long time later, and including another scout kill (which didn't impact anything then), we finally signed peace. Must have taken 20-30 turns.
2900BC War
2175BC Peace

It should also be noted that I settled a 4th city (one more than him) to grab iron the same turn we signed a cease fire. Perhaps that is what convinced him.

Had this been with AggAI setting on, I suppose the warrior is technically threatening both cities?

Spoiler :

 

[Pangaea]

Spoiler :

Was soooo close to manage to pass it up, but I was weak. It was too tempting. And figured that even if I lost the warrior and stolen workers, at least he'd lose three workers, which hurts more.

Sure enough, I got cleaned out, once again without scratching the archer. Two wars. 0 workers. Gah! But he lost 4, so eat that! And I can produce Praetorians now, so don't you try anything...

 

[elitetroops]

War success has the biggest multiplier, that would be the most important factor in their evaluation of a peace deal. If you lose a unit, you're probably screwed. The situation above is very risky. The AI cannot see your unit the turn you declare if you move into their territory and capture a worker, so it's not a conscious decision by the AI to attack you, but if they happen to move an archer into the tile anyway they attack. He has three archers in the city and workers are on the main road out of the city. If one of the archers decides to head to another city you're dead. It's also possible those three workers are defended by an archer that was left behind as they moved to horse. Good chance that guy arrives between turns.

I didn't see anything in the code suggesting duration of war would have an impact on their evaluation. Unless I'm missing something this would mean it's not like RefuseToTalk where the duration only gets extended. If they go past the threshold where cease fire isn't profitable in their eyes, they will keep that opinion until something happens to change their evaluation.

 

[elitetroops]

Any 10-gems start yet?

Not even. I'm so unlucky.

My favorite capital so far:

Spoiler :

Only room for three cities on landmass, maybe a fourth later. You can see gold and pig in the north, that spot also has fish and clams, so at least they're good cities.

Can't decide if I want to play with a small starter island, or pick something larger like this:

Spoiler :

"Only" 2 gems in capital, but insane production. So many good city spots on this island, although slow to develop as a lot of it is covered by jungle. A map from hut revealed Bismarck's culture further south. He's not the best tech trader, probably have to self tech IW early to get more gems online. I actually picked a lot of bad tech traders in this game, as well as a somewhat equal mix of low/mid/high peaceweight AI. I want their pace to be slow to kill as many as possible before longbows and hopefully avoid fighting rifles altogether.

Another potential candidate is a game where I share a fairly large landmass with De Gaulle, picked up copper with second city. Capital fairly weak, but I did get the Tower Shield event (all melee units gain cover promotion) which potentially could be HUGE.

 

[WastinTime]

I like the one that has gold too. You need the +happy.

 

[Pangaea]

My favorite capital so far:

Spoiler :

Only room for three cities on landmass, maybe a fourth later. You can see gold and pig in the north, that spot also has fish and clams, so at least they're good cities.

5 gems, triple food, BFC horse and gold elsewhere. That'll do!

Quite liking the "2nd go" map I'm on now. Actually did IW early (will you do that? Berserkers are nice) and grabbed iron with the fourth city, whose settler came out that turn. DOWs every which way, and de Gaulle actually stopped building Artemis when he must have been very close to completing it. I guess that city got threatened/attacked. Looks like there is only two marbles on the map, and I got one of them. Eventually managed to backfill during a two-front war and chopped out Oracle in 1200BC --> Civil Service

Probably very late, tho I don't know when it usually goes since this is only the second game on Immortal epic (apart from a bunch of starts that didn't feel right for one reason or another). Victoria is almost dead, just an iceball left, so then I'll swing back to deal with Peter I guess. That war is still ongoing after the triple workersteal fail. He eventually sent a stack of 4 chariots+2 archers, but we dealt with that okay despite losing a praet in a 95% counter attack. Later he stole yet another worker with a chariot from the fog. Sneaky bastard. I thought I knew about threats there, and had view of most tiles. So need to get out some workers now, as it's suddenly a bit short.

Looks promising so far. Remains to be seen where Pyramids ends up, but most probably far away in France as de Gaulle has stone + IND. 62% isn't all that much with only 800 land tiles, so will need to pick my targets wisely. Despite Mansa being close and thus an easy peace vassal target, it may actually be best to not take him on, so I can grab a bit more land (then cross my fingers he techs what I want).

Looks like the strategy of @Anysense was to get early Feudalism and then cap everybody asap, and probably direct their research. Led to incredibly fast finishes. It was on Deity, tho, so AIs are faster there. Think I'd prefer to grab more land myself though. If nothing else, it's satisfying and fun.

 

[lymond]

Assuming you are playing the game I think you are playing, the BFC copper one looks like the winner. I had to settle and island quite far away just to get metals in my game, and could not conduct an early amphibious axeman strategy.

 

[elitetroops]

Nope, not playing that game. Would be looking for quite different starts for that.

 

[Pangaea]

This is oddly very satisfying

Spoiler :

Keep wondering about all this "turn off research at Edu," though. Sometimes end up with a big stack of , which is nice because it lasts a good while. Still, turning off research for 20-30 turns or however long it was is perhaps not the best move. How do you guys usually handle this?

In this case it will only last about 25-30 turns because we're only breaking even at 10% so maybe the right call here. Warfare, costly empire... Guess I'm roleplaying the Romans.

 

[Seraiel]

I'm back and I look forward to re-start playing Civilization IV HoF and (S)GOTM hopefully this or the next week. I just need a new Blu-Ray Drive and my DVD to start finishing some games.

@ Pangaea: Being attacked from an Archer when only two are in the city is unlucky.
@ Elitetroops: Nice start .

Please write in this thread who is willing to compete for SGOTM 27. I want to put up a complete Hall of Fame team to impress.

Again, I offer free advice from Jahwe and Philip Christopher "Seraiel" Plöger for those that write @Seraiel in this thread or ask @Seraiel via PM.

 

[Pangaea]

Fantastic to see you back, @Seraiel

If you are able to complete it in only 3-ish weeks, there is a really cool BOTM game going, in BOTM 201. It's the same map as in BOTM 200, but with a different team member (we play as a 2-man team). Very unique. Raging barbs on Immortal. You start in the jungle (or an iceball)

 

[Seraiel]

I definately plan on playing some competetive games for Quattromaster. LOL, I need to play the ordinary game levels like Settler for that .

 

[Seraiel]

WHOA!

9 gems and corn, a new record

Only Gold counts for records Kai, it's better, trust your fellow team-mate Philip Christopher Seraiel Plöger.

Let' s see when we get to see my Six Golds Two Wet Corns River Copper Start That' ll break your record.

 

[Seraiel]

What am I writing. Seven Gems Two Food is as impressive as @Kaitzilla 's Five Gold Start because the Gems start has Forrests and in addition is coastal. Congratiulations from Me.