Maestro_Innit
Warlord
Well played that man. I'm getting some very useful tips here - and I love your writing style 
The INSANE Walkthrough
- Thread starter obsolete
- Start date
ABigCivFan
Emperor
Well Done. 
It is interesting that for the entire game you were like a mouse living by an Elephant (Nappy) without any protection! Even though you bribed Nappy to attack others, he could still squash you any time within a few turns with his city garrison army. He must have 10 times power than you. You were lucky Monty is on the other conti
I am also suprised HC was slow building the Space ship.
could you post some saves? I am curious to see your science rate at different stages of the game.
It is interesting that for the entire game you were like a mouse living by an Elephant (Nappy) without any protection! Even though you bribed Nappy to attack others, he could still squash you any time within a few turns with his city garrison army. He must have 10 times power than you. You were lucky Monty is on the other conti
I am also suprised HC was slow building the Space ship.could you post some saves? I am curious to see your science rate at different stages of the game.
AlessioCerci
Prince
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2007
- Messages
- 416
Why do you complain about the AI when you are still playing warlords?
obsolete
Deity
Well Done.
It is interesting that for the entire game you were like a mouse living by an Elephant (Nappy) without any protection! Even though you bribed Nappy to attack others, he could still squash you any time within a few turns with his city garrison army. He must have 10 times power than you. You were lucky Monty is on the other conti
could you post some saves? I am curious to see your science rate at different stages of the game.
I have science spending turned off for about 90-80% of the time.
In any case, I have a few saves.
Initial
Liberalism
Space Elevator
Last Turn
obsolete
Deity
Yes, you are right. I also should have maybe fake-considered stockpiling him with numerous other Great persons so I can time 4 gold-ages in a row
Actually, now that I look back, I DID make 2 lousy gun-power units (infantry). Actually I didn't make them, they were just upgrades. Near the later part I was thinking... well obviously Huayna must KNOW I don't have any gunpower units. I'll just upgrade 1 or 2 units to a gunpower so it sees I now have gunpower unitis defending. LOL
Of course that sort of thing will not deteur Monte... because he is an idiot anyway.
I always did find it weird though how cavalry count as mounted units more than gun-powder. Honestly, cavalry realistically WERE gunpowder units. Very rarely did they just rush in like you see in the action movies. Pinch really SHOULD work against them, and that's a big problem I see with this game.
It also makes no sense how war-elephants and pikemen can have such a ludicrous att/def modifier against them.
Phrederick
Warlord
Awesome! This game really completely convinces me that your strategy is possible, even in non-ideal circumstances. I don't think my playstyle really meshes with that style, but I always like learning new styles and techniques.
Impressive! I'm going to have to give this a shot, I think this strategy is definitely more viable than I at first thought, but I'm still not convinced that you can apply "no cottages" or "no lightbulbing" as a blanket rule, at least optimally, but I will definitely be trying this...
Obsolete....I absolutely love these because they go contrary to what many people like to believe and it appears to make some people get defensive and emotional. Obviously it's a game and you just have shown more ways to skin the cat...but I relish how it seems to get under the skin of those who can't resist to snipe at an obviously successful strategy.
InvisibleStalke
Emperor
Congrats - well played and extremely entertaining - now I look forward to your Diety win - maybe the obscene walkthrough?
I think there is a lot of skillful play that isn't appearing in the walkthrough though. The wonder rush and the settled GP are fine, but I am surprised the AI's aren't more successful in tech and at war in your games.
Re tech - on Emperor I've seen Mansa get Liberalism in 600AD (without any trading help from me - I was playing an isolated start) and 1936 is late for a space win - the AIs are definitely capable of launching before this.
Obviously they didn't. It seems you were careful to avoid trading key techs, but I think you must also have been tech trading a lot to keep up with the AI as your research rate in the screen shots didn't appear too impressive (of course with Spiritual you can burst research so that may be misleading).
How useful was the Internet to you? Was the world war enough to slow down the AI research rate or did you take other steps?
And militarily I am surprised you survived next to Napoleon especially when you attacked him early. Were you able to get friendly with him before the cavalry war with Mansa? Was there anything else you did beyond adopting his religion and acquiring the usual trade modifiers to keep him from attacking? I presume your power was lower than Mansa's.
I think there is a lot of skillful play that isn't appearing in the walkthrough though. The wonder rush and the settled GP are fine, but I am surprised the AI's aren't more successful in tech and at war in your games.
Re tech - on Emperor I've seen Mansa get Liberalism in 600AD (without any trading help from me - I was playing an isolated start) and 1936 is late for a space win - the AIs are definitely capable of launching before this.
Obviously they didn't. It seems you were careful to avoid trading key techs, but I think you must also have been tech trading a lot to keep up with the AI as your research rate in the screen shots didn't appear too impressive (of course with Spiritual you can burst research so that may be misleading).
How useful was the Internet to you? Was the world war enough to slow down the AI research rate or did you take other steps?
And militarily I am surprised you survived next to Napoleon especially when you attacked him early. Were you able to get friendly with him before the cavalry war with Mansa? Was there anything else you did beyond adopting his religion and acquiring the usual trade modifiers to keep him from attacking? I presume your power was lower than Mansa's.
obsolete
Deity
Well you are right in that there were a lot of other tricks in the bag so to speak during the game that I just didn't have time to put in the walkthrough. I think my writeup was already something like 25 pages!!!! And it took me many more hours to get that far than I had planned!
And yes, never trade key techs unless you have an emergency situation. E.G. No matter how much it may hurt, don't trade vital liberalism techs!!!! Not unless you plan to bi-pass liberalism, then in that case who cares.
After liberalism I'll go crazy, but I still won't trade things like Military Tradition right away. Also, when hitting electricity, etc... DON'T trade techs up this media branch until you are on your FINAL turn before completing the wonders. You don't want someone with a GE to rushbuild a wonder on you, and yes they will do that!
And again, it's fine to trade literature pre-liberalism, but only WHEN ON THE LAST TURN OF COMPLETING THE GREAT LIBRARY. Etc... Etc.
Exceptions... when you're sure the AI doesn't have forges, GW, Pyr, or HG to get GPPs for engineers very early... then you can make some changes there. Obviously the harder the level, the much faster the AI will pop out those GEs on you.
This is another reason I like the GW and Pyr, that's two more methods the AI is prevented from GEs. And of course oracle also slows them down in MANY aspects very huge early.
They can't get alphabet early, they can't do metal casing slingshots, etc, etc. they can't even use the gpps from it to lightbulb Now they also can't grab CoL cheap, which is one they don't beeline for, and hampers their liber-race.
As for internet, i always grab it whether I find it useful to me or not, at least to prevent anyone else from catching free rides.
In this game, I was a little short on specialists. Also we were forced to run under US, which prevents Rep at the end. Also with our smaller size, I figured it much superior to totaly shut down all science spending again, and use the Internet to stay running at the top. How much did all that gold help Nappy? Good question, I'm STILL not sure what he even did with it, but trade-menus show that he didn't have 40K for long. He ended up never showing more than 500 for some weird reason.
O_o
I think I also got Qui (a very happy tech trader) to refuse trades with Hauyna. And IIRC, he really took a rapid tech fall after that.
I'm not sure anymore what my exact relation was with Nappy when I had my cavalry army. But I did a lot to keep increasing the modifiers throughout the game. A few times I was FORCED to switch to FR just to trade with his vassal. This was enough to get nappy to refuse trade with me. I had no choice though, as I had to trade to backfill and get other key techs to re-bribe nappy, etc.
There was about 5-turn cool-down wait periods before I could switch civics again, where i'd go back into the same religion as Nappy, and he'd re-open his trade and move back into pleased from cautious.
The one nice thing about Nappy when you're running a heavily based SE system, is Rep is nappy's favourite civic. So you can count those as free bonus modifiers right off the bat.
I demanded a tech early from both Nappy and Mansa, I really shouldn't have bothered I guess. That's' just taking a long shot, and getting an extra -1 around to haunt you.
In fact, later on near the end, when I kept getting caught trying to sabotage a stupid aluminum hill (god my spies were awful), nappy shut down trade which really sucked, because he had my only source of coal. A couple rounds later he DEMANDED something from me, I gave it, and right away that +1 put me back into pleased mode with him again. So I got the coal back
And yes, never trade key techs unless you have an emergency situation. E.G. No matter how much it may hurt, don't trade vital liberalism techs!!!! Not unless you plan to bi-pass liberalism, then in that case who cares.
After liberalism I'll go crazy, but I still won't trade things like Military Tradition right away. Also, when hitting electricity, etc... DON'T trade techs up this media branch until you are on your FINAL turn before completing the wonders. You don't want someone with a GE to rushbuild a wonder on you, and yes they will do that!
And again, it's fine to trade literature pre-liberalism, but only WHEN ON THE LAST TURN OF COMPLETING THE GREAT LIBRARY. Etc... Etc.
Exceptions... when you're sure the AI doesn't have forges, GW, Pyr, or HG to get GPPs for engineers very early... then you can make some changes there. Obviously the harder the level, the much faster the AI will pop out those GEs on you.
This is another reason I like the GW and Pyr, that's two more methods the AI is prevented from GEs. And of course oracle also slows them down in MANY aspects very huge early.
They can't get alphabet early, they can't do metal casing slingshots, etc, etc. they can't even use the gpps from it to lightbulb
Now they also can't grab CoL cheap, which is one they don't beeline for, and hampers their liber-race.As for internet, i always grab it whether I find it useful to me or not, at least to prevent anyone else from catching free rides.
In this game, I was a little short on specialists. Also we were forced to run under US, which prevents Rep at the end. Also with our smaller size, I figured it much superior to totaly shut down all science spending again, and use the Internet to stay running at the top. How much did all that gold help Nappy? Good question, I'm STILL not sure what he even did with it, but trade-menus show that he didn't have 40K for long. He ended up never showing more than 500 for some weird reason.
O_o
I think I also got Qui (a very happy tech trader) to refuse trades with Hauyna. And IIRC, he really took a rapid tech fall after that.
I'm not sure anymore what my exact relation was with Nappy when I had my cavalry army. But I did a lot to keep increasing the modifiers throughout the game. A few times I was FORCED to switch to FR just to trade with his vassal. This was enough to get nappy to refuse trade with me. I had no choice though, as I had to trade to backfill and get other key techs to re-bribe nappy, etc.
There was about 5-turn cool-down wait periods before I could switch civics again, where i'd go back into the same religion as Nappy, and he'd re-open his trade and move back into pleased from cautious.
The one nice thing about Nappy when you're running a heavily based SE system, is Rep is nappy's favourite civic. So you can count those as free bonus modifiers right off the bat.
I demanded a tech early from both Nappy and Mansa, I really shouldn't have bothered I guess. That's' just taking a long shot, and getting an extra -1 around to haunt you.
In fact, later on near the end, when I kept getting caught trying to sabotage a stupid aluminum hill (god my spies were awful), nappy shut down trade which really sucked, because he had my only source of coal. A couple rounds later he DEMANDED something from me, I gave it, and right away that +1 put me back into pleased mode with him again. So I got the coal back
ParadigmShifter
Random Nonsense Generator
I thought you only get the "wisely chosen your civics" bonus when both you and the AI are running their favourite civic, so if you build pyramids early then you won't get positive modifiers from the little corporal until he researches constitution?
I spotted another mistake in your write up too, early on but didn't want to post anything in the middle of it. You said you couldn't build any macemen because you had no iron - you can build them with copper or iron!
Also, you missed improving a few tiles that looked like great spots for cottages
I spotted another mistake in your write up too, early on but didn't want to post anything in the middle of it. You said you couldn't build any macemen because you had no iron - you can build them with copper or iron!
Also, you missed improving a few tiles that looked like great spots for cottages
obsolete
Deity
Paradigm, the only time I really care for making mace-men, is when I have a leader under Rome. In that case everything I do REVOLVES around Iron. Due to the Pratts obviously. But you are right, I should change that because not everyone beelines for cav so much like I do and ignores maces under every other leader; and bronze works just the same for macemen.
I will fix that ASAP.
As for the Chosen civics, yes you don't get it to work starting in the stone age, but it is one that you can DEPEND on to get every time (assuming he doesn't die too soon).
Even though Nappy, is so stupid that even with Rep as his favourite civic, will hold a UN vote just to ask everyone to go to U.S., which is totally insane (but it's the AI, it's stupid), Rep is still his #1 civic no matter what.
I will fix that ASAP.
As for the Chosen civics, yes you don't get it to work starting in the stone age, but it is one that you can DEPEND on to get every time (assuming he doesn't die too soon).
Even though Nappy, is so stupid that even with Rep as his favourite civic, will hold a UN vote just to ask everyone to go to U.S., which is totally insane (but it's the AI, it's stupid), Rep is still his #1 civic no matter what.
jason77024
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2007
- Messages
- 208
Thanks for the walkthroughs - very instructive. I am settling lots more priests these days, though I think I did bulb Theology once to prevent any other civ from founding Christianity. (I didn't adopt it; I just liked the religious status quo.)
One question I have not seen asked in these threads: Do you anticipate the BtS Cav pushback will affect your strategy more than others? I realize things will be situational, but would you expect to hit with Cuirassiers or wait until Cav?
Thanks again.
Jason
One question I have not seen asked in these threads: Do you anticipate the BtS Cav pushback will affect your strategy more than others? I realize things will be situational, but would you expect to hit with Cuirassiers or wait until Cav?
Thanks again.
Jason
obsolete
Deity
Special Features
Two image features I'll apply here as a special bonus (not that big a deal really), before I clean out the whole screen-shot directory.
Please note in image #1 enemy units look black & splotchy. Sorry about that, it's a graphic glitch in the game that happened right after nappy nuked HC. Actually you can see in the previous shot where my caveman was getting attacked by the helicopter, there are some splatches too on the enemy units.
----
1952 AD
One of our spies who has traveled by sub over to HC returns back significant data on how one of the battlefields is looking. We can gather that at least one oil field has been totally destroyed, and the area in the region is currently being over-run by French modern-armour. How many other cities will HC be expected to lose, we are not sure yet, but we expect the numbers to climb.
1953 AD
To the west of the same continent, another spy sends back photographic evidence of the effects on HC's capital after a nuclear attack targeted the area just recently. One ICBM hit the capital, while another imploded on another city near there. We see the city's population has plumeted down to just 13. Also, effects of fall-out and damage are evident. We hope to get our spy even closer for a better look soon.
We also gathered data that HC was constructing yet a new West Point in Machu. We believe this is probably due to losing a previous WP facility to the French sometime earlier.
Two image features I'll apply here as a special bonus (not that big a deal really), before I clean out the whole screen-shot directory.
Please note in image #1 enemy units look black & splotchy. Sorry about that, it's a graphic glitch in the game that happened right after nappy nuked HC. Actually you can see in the previous shot where my caveman was getting attacked by the helicopter, there are some splatches too on the enemy units.
----
1952 AD
One of our spies who has traveled by sub over to HC returns back significant data on how one of the battlefields is looking. We can gather that at least one oil field has been totally destroyed, and the area in the region is currently being over-run by French modern-armour. How many other cities will HC be expected to lose, we are not sure yet, but we expect the numbers to climb.
Spoiler :
1953 AD
To the west of the same continent, another spy sends back photographic evidence of the effects on HC's capital after a nuclear attack targeted the area just recently. One ICBM hit the capital, while another imploded on another city near there. We see the city's population has plumeted down to just 13. Also, effects of fall-out and damage are evident. We hope to get our spy even closer for a better look soon.
We also gathered data that HC was constructing yet a new West Point in Machu. We believe this is probably due to losing a previous WP facility to the French sometime earlier.
Spoiler :
Another excellent game 
and I hope an adequate demonstration of the power of settled specialists to satisfy even your strongest critics. I agree with your basic premise that productivity from food and hammers are more vital than commerce if you know how to use them well. Even if the strategy you're employing here isn't the "best" use of your starting position and the diplomatic situation (versus an axe rush of an enemy capital, say) at least you're having fun and winning on Immortal, which is no mean feat. Plus the fact your write up is entertaining ... so thanks for that.
Now you just need to find out how to apply this technique to BtS, and happily there are even more wonders to build
and you can capture settled enemy settled specialists. Golden Ages change the game dynamic significantly since they boost GPP production and allow free civics switches. I wonder how you'd adapt to that?
and I hope an adequate demonstration of the power of settled specialists to satisfy even your strongest critics. I agree with your basic premise that productivity from food and hammers are more vital than commerce if you know how to use them well. Even if the strategy you're employing here isn't the "best" use of your starting position and the diplomatic situation (versus an axe rush of an enemy capital, say) at least you're having fun and winning on Immortal, which is no mean feat. Plus the fact your write up is entertaining ... so thanks for that.Now you just need to find out how to apply this technique to BtS, and happily there are even more wonders to build
and you can capture settled enemy settled specialists. Golden Ages change the game dynamic significantly since they boost GPP production and allow free civics switches. I wonder how you'd adapt to that?This whole strategy depends on getting those wonders, so you do not have any defense as you build wonders. What do you do if the AI approaches your one city with 5 - 6 axes and several horse units ?
