you sure about this? So essentially you have a total trade limitation, not a per civ trade limitation?
The Immortal Challenge 1: Apocalypto
- Thread starter aelf
- Start date
you sure about this? So essentially you have a total trade limitation, not a per civ trade limitation?
shyuhe
Deity
Yes this is true. If you know 3 civs and get a tech from civ A, civ B and C will both count one tech traded towards WFYABTA (assuming B and C both have contact with you and A).
So, if I understand it correctly, the term 'WFYBTA' is a complete misnomer, given that it has absolutely nothing to do with how 'advanced' you are, and will in fact allow you to trade even if you have a ton of techs over the AI. I did wonder why I kept getting that response when I was struggling to keep up, but never when I was racing ahead... 
So, if I understand it correctly, the term 'WFYBTA' is a complete misnomer, given that it has absolutely nothing to do with how 'advanced' you are, and will in fact allow you to trade even if you have a ton of techs over the AI. I did wonder why I kept getting that response when I was struggling to keep up, but never when I was racing ahead...
I believe there is a modifier that makes the limit go up when you're behind.
Dirk1302
Deity
I once had an immortal game where Mansa Musa wouldn't trade with me but people like Hannibal,Saladin,Catherine and a few others would. MM was pleased with me the others varied from Cautious to pleased. Also MM was tech leader in the game at that moment and ranked above me in score .
This situation lasted the whole game.
I still don't know how that was possible, anybody have a clue?
This situation lasted the whole game.
I still don't know how that was possible, anybody have a clue?
Hm, a clue... Or rather, a guess.
(Assuming shyuhe is right, I don´t know for myself tho.)
If you have traded alot with MM and a little with the ppl MM knows, you could have reached the WFYAGTA limit for him, but if the other ppls dosnt know about MM, they wouldnt count it? Or maybe it´s enough if they didnt have contact back in the days when you and MM traded techs... (Dosnt sound to likely, but with continents and you were a fast to sailer, it could be possible).
Dirk1302
Deity
No that wasn't the case. At the moment that MM shut the door everybody knew each other on my continent and i was able to trade with Hannibal,Catherine and Saladin who were also on my continent. But yes i had traded most of my tech with MM at the moment he stopped.
All sources i know are adamant that only global trade counts, not with whom you trade. Still it seemed in this game that i had traded too much with MM personally.
Also this is the clearest case i know but there are more games where i was somewhat surprised at which leaders wanted to trade and which wouldn't knowing their relative values for 'WFYBTA' limit from the XML.
All sources i know are adamant that only global trade counts, not with whom you trade. Still it seemed in this game that i had traded too much with MM personally.
Also this is the clearest case i know but there are more games where i was somewhat surprised at which leaders wanted to trade and which wouldn't knowing their relative values for 'WFYBTA' limit from the XML.
futurehermit
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2006
- Messages
- 5,724
My sense is that tech leaders will be more strict with trading to protect their advantage. Can anyone verify this?
aelf
Ashen One
I'm not proposing we kill Louis off anytime soon. But I'm also wary of becoming too sedentary. I have a feeling we have to start taking Roman cities before the advent of Gunpowder if we want to catch up with the other continent in the late game.
Syndrome Zed
Wanna see my quad laser?
I have to agree with that - it's the other continent that worries me most right now. They may turn out to be a red herring of sorts - "Much Ado About Nothing" as Shakespeare said - but we have no way of knowing just yet. While the economy needs to be improved, my gut tells me to be worried about falling behind too far.
PS Good luck with Photobucket - any chance of maybe archiving one of the old E-level challenges or moving the screenshots from it to another service?
aelf
Ashen One
I don't know of any other reliable service (don't even bother with ImageShack). I wonder what Sisiutil does. He has even more images available for viewing. I don't know if he uses anything besides Photobucket. Maybe he upgraded to Pro?
No modifier to make the limit go down when you're ahead, though?
I struggle to understand the rationale behind this particular feature. I realise that they wanted to prevent the ridiculous civ3-style 'don't bother with research' tech-buying strategy, but WFYBTA seems like a rather crude and arbitrary way to do so. And surely making the AI demand prohibitive amounts of gold for their techs is enough to deal with that problem. I mean, how often do you actually buy techs with gold on civ4? Am I missing something here?
On the far more important topic of this challenge, I think uberfish's city specialisation discussion is a really good idea; it's a matter that is often talked about in theory, but rarely explored in specific cases.
So, to get the ball rolling...
Orleans: Globe-enabled troop-whipping farm? It's got superb growth potential with all that food, and a nice position for pumping out units to conquer the south.
Rheims: GP farm? Chaining irrigation would be a right pain, and it'd need lots of whipping to get the buildings in place, but otherwise it would be a fairly good spot, imo. (Though Paris or Lyons might be better choices if they're conquered soon enough).
Tours: Cottage spam? It would make a nice production centre once State-Property is available, but that's too far away to be a significant consideration at this point. The pigs and the lake will keep it growing whilst the jungles are cleared; as the cottages are built the citizens can be switched over from the lake. Production is going to be pathetic, though, so building Wall Street or Oxford would be painfully slow.
Tenochtitlan: I'd say use the capital as a general purpose city for the time being, changing it into a production centre once a few more commerce cities are ready to take up the slack.
Teotihuacan: Not ideal for anything, but if you could chain irrigation from the lake, it could make a decent production city. It would be easier to spam cottages, but it'd grow at a horribly slow speed, and would probably never be able to work more than eight or nine cottages.
Tlatelolco: Nice short term option, but weak in the longer term. Cottages where possible.
As for the other continent, I'd definitely agree with making contact asap. The earlier you know who and what you're up against, the earlier you can start to plan your victory.
aelf
Ashen One
Be careful, lest you incur the wrath of "the game is too easy" gods. Given the chance, they would prefer as much bias against the human player as possible so that they can have a 'challenge' on Noble and laugh at those who have to play on Settler (and still lose) as a result. One of them might even PM you some verbal abuse.
Winston Hughes said:
While I agree with city specialisation, I'm not used to doing specialisation for the sake of it. I tend to manage cities according to current needs, which explains the gold mining cities that are weak in the long term. A few of the suggestions you gave, such as making Rheims a GP farm is going a little too far, IMO. Why can't our capital be the GP farm, given its abundance of food? And while Tours can have lots of cottages, we might just end up building Wall Street or Oxford somewhere more convenient.
Nor do I agree with city specialisation 'for the sake of it'. Of course current needs cannot be ignored (the gold cities were a good choice, imo), and I'd never say 'don't build a mine there; that's a commerce city', for example.
But I do find it extremely useful to plan out in advance what I intend to do with each city, and gradually build them up in the chosen way. The plan may change over time, but I find that this approach always seems to lead to a stronger mid-/late-game empire (and so an better chance at victory) than when I just go for short-term advantages.
As for your more specific points... Firstly, that's exactly what I meant about Tours: the low production would make Wall Street or Oxford a pain to build (so I'd look for other viable sites before deciding to build one of them in Tours).
Secondly, whilst the capital certainly could be used as a GP farm, it's got the potential to be a strong production city (esp. with bureaucracy), which I would see as a better long-term use of the site. Rheims wouldn't come into its own so soon (which might lead you to prefer the capital), but it could do the job nicely in the long term, hence my suggestion that it could be considered for that role. Too many times I've built the NE in my capital, only to find that I hardly run any specialists there as time goes on, because I'm too busy using its bureaucracy-powered production to pump out units etc.
And the 'too easy' brigade? I'll just give them my stock response: "civ4 can be set up to be pretty much impossible; if you haven't won before 1000ad at deity on a huge map with raging barbs, always war, no city razing, require complete kills, and playing as your least favourite civ, then you've no business saying the game is too easy".
But I do find it extremely useful to plan out in advance what I intend to do with each city, and gradually build them up in the chosen way. The plan may change over time, but I find that this approach always seems to lead to a stronger mid-/late-game empire (and so an better chance at victory) than when I just go for short-term advantages.
As for your more specific points... Firstly, that's exactly what I meant about Tours: the low production would make Wall Street or Oxford a pain to build (so I'd look for other viable sites before deciding to build one of them in Tours).
Secondly, whilst the capital certainly could be used as a GP farm, it's got the potential to be a strong production city (esp. with bureaucracy), which I would see as a better long-term use of the site. Rheims wouldn't come into its own so soon (which might lead you to prefer the capital), but it could do the job nicely in the long term, hence my suggestion that it could be considered for that role. Too many times I've built the NE in my capital, only to find that I hardly run any specialists there as time goes on, because I'm too busy using its bureaucracy-powered production to pump out units etc.
And the 'too easy' brigade? I'll just give them my stock response: "civ4 can be set up to be pretty much impossible; if you haven't won before 1000ad at deity on a huge map with raging barbs, always war, no city razing, require complete kills, and playing as your least favourite civ, then you've no business saying the game is too easy".
DaviddesJ
Deity
The purpose of WFYABTA isn't to make the game "harder". It's to address a specific problem, namely, that humans can play the trading game much better than AIs (unless the AIs conspire against the human, which tends to get people up in arms), and so games at very high level tend to degenerate into researching just a small number of techs and trading each around for lots of others. I think it's good to address this, even though WFYABTA is not a perfect mechanism by any stretch of the imagination.
I'd prefer that approach, myself (though I take your point). WFYBTA just seems unnatural to me, especially when a weak AI civ won't trade a minor tech for something it really needs.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
Yeah, that's what I did. The cost wasn't onerous, as I recall, and it meant no more hassles about bandwidth or storage space for the foreseeable future.
As for the current game... wow, this is something of a tough map. My own experience with Monty is that he lacks economic advantages, so early cottage spam (assuming you're going with a CE) is crucial. Good thing you got the shrine early on, though; that should help in the long run once you get cottages around the capital and commerce multipliers built.
The other continent is indeed a concern. Optics should be on the agenda fairly soon in order to find out what we're up against.
I think some degree of city specialization is pretty important in warlords on high difficulty levels, more so than in vanilla 1.61. This is due to the great general system, which strongly rewards having dedicated production cities, and the improved AI city management in 2.08.
shadow2k
Emperor
No. Specialization is important so that you aren't trying to build everything in every city.
GG's could easily be done without, of that I have no doubt.
