WOTM 04 - Final Spoiler

[lroumen]

I normally run Free Market when I have a lot of cities or I use Mercentilism when I'm using Representation or try to go for a cultural victory. Environmentalism only late game if necessary (not really this game).

I really didn't know that State Property could have such impact. I just thought that it was only for the extra food it provides, and since I generally do not feel a need to build so many workshops or watermills, State Propery becomes a forgotten Civic.

I will remember this. Thank you for the epiphany.

 

[Erkon]

Does State Property really cut the cost for large empires? (Assuming courthouses in all cities and Forgotten Palace as a second government centre).

At the end of this game, I had 53 cities. I did not have courthouses in all of them, but if I have had, the distance cost would be:

no of cities / cost
2/0
6/1
20/2
13/3
6/4
2/5
3/6

There may be a slight error from rounding in the above figures, but I end up with a distance cost of 137 gold (or 2.6 gold / city). Since I didn't have many opponents left, I only had internal trade (1 gold / trade route). Civic delta cost was 7 gold. In my game, the profit would then be 137-53+7=91 gold with State Property instead of Free Market.

I am not sure how much the gold/route increase when cities grow (in size and improvements) so I have not taken that into consideration.

Now, with Mercantilism, I would get 3 gold / merchant which would give me a margin to compensate for the extra civic cost.

Then there is a one time cost for the extra turn(s) in anarchy to switch to State Property.

Or have I missed anything fundamental

 

[Mutineer]

well, with Mercantenilism and representation you get 6 units of something * 53 cities.

so, so long as city maintaince at average <= 6 Mercantenilism + representation is better strigth away. In addition even if city maintaince at average 9, but you have at average 50&#37; commerce/research increase/per city mercantenilism still better.
And we did not take in account additional GP points.

Simply put, state property is tend to be better for big and undeveloped empires or when you want production.

For big well developed empires still in representation mercantenilism is better, especially if you take in account that you close trade routes for foreign civ to your civ, so they can not benefit from trade with your lots of big cities.

 

[Doc TK]

I seem to remember looking at dist maint. costs in some of my larger civs (like your 53 city examples) and the cost was HUGE. Way more than 6 per city, but I may be imagining that (something like 8 per).

I think it's pretty easy to look at the cost screen and figure it out (dist main/num cities) vs. 6. Note: how developed you are doesn't really change this. Note 2: if you aren't still researching, i.e., going for dom/farming, then having lots of Sci as opposed to cutting costs is not the same thing.

 

[Mutineer]

Note: how developed you are doesn't really change this.

It does. Your 6 units of research/gold does got effected by % buildings.
So, if most of your cities have bank/markets/groseries you have +100% to gold, libraries/unies +50% to research.

so your 3gold 3 research from merchant become 6 gold 4.5 research. Total 10.5.

About development I give it more like rule of trubm, but it does matter.

Maintains cost got multiplyed only by inflation, which later in game become big enogth to matter.

 

[lroumen]

I am always troubled by building so many banks, groceries, markets while at the same time you need to have a library, university, observatory and so forth. I just cannot always manage it fast enough in commerce cities because I rarely plan many tiles for hammers in them.

Maybe it is related to Emperor level? It is a bit above my capability but this was a great game to learn.

Oh and total upkeep was ~13 gold in my farthest city, and with my empire stretched out that far the average upkeep was ~9 gold. In hindsight a capital move would have been the best solution or indeed state property. I had used Merchantilism I think, but it was less profitable my that case.

 

[Mutineer]

Actially correction, I miss one factor.
State property elliminate only distance component, for this big amount of cities it would be aproximatly only half of what shown as city maintance, may be even less then half.

So, Mercantenilism is even better!

 

[Doc TK]

Erkon - for your 53 cities - what was your dist maint cost?

Also - the same rules about compound effects of buildings apply whether you are talking about having a surplus because of reduced cost or extra because of Merc/Rep. So, we still are looking at seeing whether we can get more than 6 per. (There is the issue of GP gen, but we can leave that out for now).

 

[bldrnnr]

First gotm of the month for me, and well above my experience level so I went adventurer. Took too long getting to IW so I only knocked out Brennus early and took some border cities from Mansa. Never experienced the economy collapse of rapid expansion before, so I spent a good chunk of the game with 10&#37; research. Wish I'd known to only keep the prime cities, and raze the rest, but I learned from this.

Once I fell behind in tech, I spent the rest of the game building up my 11 cities. Still learning about specialization, and probably need to focus on that more. The same turn a UN vote came up, the Incan declared war on me and parked a tank next to Rome. I was another 12 turns of research for that tech, so I figured it was my clue to bow out gracefully. Voted for Mansa, who won it all. He kept taking pity on me and gifting me technology. I think he did it 4 times during the course of the game.

Now for fun I think I'm going to try a "practice game" of the normal start of that map. Tech wise go for Wheel - BW - IW and then just the necessities for CoL.

I have not played much Civ4 or WL's yet, about a half dozen games. Now you've got my appetite wet for more...

 

[ungy]

Contender, diplo in 1314, score 201885.

I don't play marathon so I really didn't have a good sense of timing or flow.

When I saw the gold, I decided I'd try and keep my economy together enough for a diplo. BW-Wheel-IW-pot then COL track founding conf in 930.

A barb galley showed up before I had sailing (was planning on trading). Not good on marathon--lost all my fishing boats and ended up researching sailing anyway to clear it.

Celtic wars 1165-950 and 650-640.

waited for cats but MM just got to LB.
MM 300AD-620. (India takes as vassal but not much war).

Wash 845-920 (capitulation).
Washington had an early circumnavigation which revealed the map shape.

Wonders: both GL, Col, Taj.

FP in Djenne.

7 GP 5 shots at an engineer of around 20&#37; or so. Got it on the last which cut maybe 15 turns or so off.

Vote was overkill--all for me vs. Asoka.

A very enjoyable game--I had my doubts about marathon but didn't take too long.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Spaceship Victory in 1597 AD

Oooh, well done! I was feeling really proud of having managed to get a spaceship victory in 1645AD, which I thought was pretty good - so I submit it, come to read the final spoiler, and - wow, you've beaten me by quite a margin!

I did something quite similar to you too: I started intending for domination, but decided it was going too slowly and I'd end up with a pathetically late domination year, so I toyed with diplomatic, but then decided on spacerace. Main difference was I did miles more conquering initially - to the extent that I spent the last couple of hundred turns literally 18-20 tiles short of the domination limit and anxiously watching my borders to make sure I didn't slip over the limit by accident - doubly nervewracking since I had America as a vassal and couldn't control what he was doing with his borders.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Before State Property the capture of enemy cities would crunch my economy. So I start always my conquest campaign when I not so far away from Communism. In this game I got Communism at 788AD.

Wow! How on Earth did you manage that?????? That's impressive - I normally think I'm doing pretty well if I'm around education/optics by that date, I didn't think something like communism at that time would be even possible on emperor level. I take it you generated a lot of great scientists?

 

[Erkon]

Erkon - for your 53 cities - what was your dist maint cost?

Also - the same rules about compound effects of buildings apply whether you are talking about having a surplus because of reduced cost or extra because of Merc/Rep. So, we still are looking at seeing whether we can get more than 6 per. (There is the issue of GP gen, but we can leave that out for now).

My total distance cost was 183 gold + 22% inflation = 223 gold. This gives 4.2 gold / city. This was 970 AD and I had the Forgotten Palace situated slightly off the optimal site. I noticed that one former indian city closer to the FP had a higher distance cost compared to one further away (from both Palace and FP). Weird.

 

[killerloop]

Spaceship Victory in 1608 AD, 55596 score (5061)

......which I cannot submit. After my 1st spoiler the game refused to proceed with my saved game. I finally reinstalled the HOF mod, which got the game working again, but only by double clicking sav-files (automatically loading mod), not by starting up Warlords normally. This still doesn't work, so now I finished the game I can do a reinstall.

The latests save I had was from 460 BC, so I replayed 50 turns from there.....
For what is worth, my game went following:

between 900 and 1000 I wiped out Mansa, taking his cities, then focused on growth and science. Always run at 100&#37;. Build all available wonders, except for Hagia (596AD), and in the end game I missed Penta (1476AD) and 3G-dam (1596AD), in middle of space race.

I originally went for Diplo. Finished UN in 1410, but Asoka always voted for Wasington, although having more favourable relations with me. Can somebody explain me what is in the equation there.....?? Power must be very important, as that's the only lead I didn't have.

So therefore switch to space race.... Tx, for a fun game.

 

[Pideocle]

Nice map.

The beginning was easy : Brennus was far too close.

So I built a few praetorians and axeman and started war against Brennus in 1570 bc and finished in 1150 bc, taking his 4 cities which turn out to be hard for my economy (science fall to 20 %)
After that I waited preparing an attack against Malinese and his holy city of confucianism but he was too strong in science (or I was too weak) ... I Tried to have liberalism first but was beaten by Kankan musa so I decided to run simply for space race : war with others seemed to me too complicated (need galions) and uncertain ...
I finished the spaceship first in 1621 ad ... which is not bad for me ...

 

[Alraun]

Wow! How on Earth did you manage that?????? That's impressive - I normally think I'm doing pretty well if I'm around education/optics by that date, I didn't think something like communism at that time would be even possible on emperor level. I take it you generated a lot of great scientists?

Teching is faster on higher levels, not slower.

 

[Ribannah]

CONTENDER
First spoiler

CONQUEST VICTORY, 915/920ad, 397593, 36H1M
Question: which turn counts, before or after the message?

Our plan was to go after the remaining AI in the following order: America, Inca, Carthage, India. First, America and Inca were closer to Rome, and the economy was an issue until the Forbidden Palace was finally completed in Djenne. This plan was unfortunately thwarted because Carthage, who were to that point our best buddies, declared on us from out of the blue.
I estimate that we lost 10-20 turns there as well as early access to the wonders in Cuzco (Carthage had nothing).
I took the conquest victory because I didn't want to play on for spaceship with the need to check for unwanted domination on every turn, although the empire was perfect for an early spaceship launch.


Sidenotes
- all military land units were built in Rome
- our only civics were Organized Religion and Bureaucracy
- when we declared war on the Inca in 692ad, a trireme and a galley of our vassal America were transported to a 1-tile lake at land-locked Utica
- I did not milk for score (didn't even use the Great Merchant or research Liberalism because that was suboptimal gamewise)
- I had to replay half a turn (no changes) when the game auto-minimized in 708ad and would not come back up

Score
1ad = 994
500ad = 2044
840ad = 3553 (pop 71.46&#37;, land 50.48%)
915ad = 4329
920ad = 4610 (pop 83.45%, land 62.74%)

Barbarians
260 Aryen

Mali
10 Takedda
30 Djenne
90 Tadmekka
160 Timbuktu
250 Kumbi Saleh, Mali destroyed

America
180 Rome declare war (Carthage asked)
320 Los Angeles
390 Washington: GREAT WALL
490 Boston: STONEHENGE, PARTHENON, America capitulate

Carthage
516 Carthage declare war
580 Carthage
596 Thaenae
644 Utica
652 Kerkouane
684 Hadrumetum, Carthage capitulate

Inca
692 Rome declare war
732 Corihuayrachina
748 Huamanga
788 Ollantaytambo
812 Cuzco: HANGING GARDENS, CHICHEN ITZA, UNIVERSITY OF SANKORE
812 Vilcabamba
835 Tiwanaku
845 Machu Picchu, Inca capitulate

India
870 Rome declare war
875 Lahore
890 Bangalore
900 Punjab
915 Delhi: PYRAMIDS, ANGKOR WAT, TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS
915 Jaipur, India capitulate

Technology
40 Horseback Riding (trade)
150 Compass
160 Theology (trade)
250 Feudalism (trade)
400 Engineering
556 Philosophy (trade)
588 Guilds, Education (GS)
732 Printing Press, Drama (trade)
756 Optics (trade)
764 Banking
850 Replaceable Parts
895 Economics
920 Gunpowder

Rome
10 Catapult
20 Catapult, Great Prophet, MAHABODI (GP)
50 Maceman
70 Maceman
90 Maceman
120 =12 Maceman
150 Maceman
200 Harbor
220 =13
260 Courthouse
280 Maceman, Instructor (GG)
300 Praetorian
320 =14 Praetorian
340 Praetorian
360 Catapult
370 Catapult
390 =15
400 Praetorian
430 Trebuchet
460 =16
470 Trebuchet
508 Trebuchet
532 Trebuchet
548 Longbowman
588 Stable
612 Knight
644 Knight
668 Knight
692 =19
772 NATIONAL EPIC
804 Great Prophet (joins)
840 =21
845 Grocer
855 Military Academy (GG)
870 Knight
875 Caravel
895 Great Merchant (Economics)

Other
110 Antium: GREAT LIBRARY
250 Bitracte: Great General
532 Antium: Great Scientist
588 Aryen: SISTINE CHAPEL
652 Neapolis: HAGIA SOPHIA
668 Djenne: FORBIDDEN PALACE
788 Antium: Great General

 

[AlanH]

Question: which turn counts, before or after the message?

That's all taken care of by the submission system, which extracts the victory date and turn and score details from your save,. But it should be the victory turn as defined in your replay file, and therefore displayed in your personal hall of fame.

 

[Ribannah]

Thanks Alan, in turns out that the victory date is the turn AFTER.
I played this game in 17 sessions (2-18) and thought this was incredibly fast -but someone managed to submit on Dec 17 ...

 

[DynamicSpirit]

(A bit slower than some of the other spaceship victories reported but at least I got a higher score )

And after my quick comments to Vynd, I may as well do a full spoiler The following isn’t remotely chronological – I’m mentioning interesting highlights, dilemmas and questions instead.

From Domination to Diplo to Spaceship

Spoiler :

500AD saw me in the throes of a domination attempt. I’d absorbed Celtia, most of Mali, and was now eating away at America (just be thankful we’re not playing as the Iraqis…). Although doing domination, I was also being fanatical about my economy, since I could guess what the elongated map would otherwise do to it – so I was basically cottaging everywhere I went; that meant I didn’t have the economic problems a lot of people reported, but on the other hand I wasn’t going to achieve my domination nearly as fast as I’m sure a lot of people would be doing.

At some point somewhere around 1000AD, by which time I’d added America as a vassal, and was tearing through India, I started to notice that my economy was actually becoming very healthy – I was even beginning to catch up on everyone else in tech. So I reasoned, why not, instead of going for a hopelessly slow domination, beeline for mass media and try a (hopefully, fast-ish) diplomatic.

That plan lasted for about 10 turns before I saw the flaw: Noone else was going to vote for me. And having America as a vassal was useless diplomatically because he remained furious with me. Because I’d been using slavery a lot, my population, unusually, was lagging behind my landarea, so there was no way I could get the population to vote myself a diplo win without triggering a domination win in the process. Bugger!

That left spacerace, so I decided to end the conquering as soon as Asoka was gone, and use my rapidly increasing science output to build a spaceship.

Heroic City – or not

Spoiler :

I notice most people else posting decided to use Rome as their main military city. I didn’t, I used Rome as a semi-great person farm instead, because it was so far from the battlefield (besides the delays in units getting to the front, part of my obsession with my economy involved counting the maintenance cost of all the useless units still trying to reach the battle). That left me a problem of where to have my heroic epic city, since Rome was the only city that had any decent production. I scanned high and low (or more accurately given the shape of the peninsula, left and right) and eventually spotted a spot just south of Timbuktu with cows, floodplains, and four hills. That’d do, so I sent my settler there and even named the new city ‘Heroic City’. Of course it just had to be where about 10 turns previously I’d razed a Malinese city because there was a better commerce spot a couple of tiles away. You live and learn…

Trouble is, building a heroic epic city from scratch takes time. And by the time Heroic City was halfway through the Heroic Epic, the battlefront had moved to the suburbs of Washington (be really grateful I’m not playing as Saddam this time… Observe there’s a couple of oilfields not too far away on this map…). I captured Atlanta, near the gems SE of Washington, which had rice, grassland, and 8 hills! A far better military city. So Heroic City never got to complete its epic, although as an act of compassion on its citizens I allowed it to keep its name right to the end of the game.

Atlanta never got to make that many military units either. Shortly after it was up and running, my spacerace plans took over, so Atlanta (along with Rome) turned into my main wonder/spaceship parts city.

The MidGame Wars

Spoiler :

I had a couple of interruptions to my spacerace. Carthage and Huayna simultaneously declared war around 1400 (?) I think. I took it as an excuse to capture a couple of Hannibal’s cities that were poking into my territory, giving my self a much easier to defend border. Then I made peace with Carthage, but not with Inca, partly because his science seemed to have dropped markedly when he declared war, and I liked keeping it dropped, and partly because I was having such fun killing his galleons, frigates, and ironclads with my destroyer. (I made peace pretty rapidly when I spotted he had a destroyer…)

Only trouble is, that left my on about 61.5% land area, and I spent the rest of the game carefully watching my borders. It was OK in the end but perilously close – when I got the spaceship victory, I was on 63.14% landarea (64% to trigger domination). Great for giving me a high score, not so good for my peace of mind while playing.

And as for my vassal Washington – the awkward sod. Huayna had various cities dotted around on the desert and tundra around my borders. Basically any spot in my territory that I didn’t want to have a city, Huayna had one. Washington made it his business to send his cavalry round cleaning up and razing all these cities – I’m sure he was doing it deliberately to get back at me by giving me a heart failure or something: Every time I saw his cavalry at the gates of another Huayna city, I’d anxiously check my diminishing tiles-to-domination figure.

The Final War: Hannibal gets very Annoying

Spoiler :

1634 AD, 11 turns from building my spaceship and what did Hannibal do? Yep he suddenly declared war. I should’ve seen it coming I guess, his military power had been going through the roof, while I’d been beelining for the spaceship, and building happiness/health buildings/founding extra cities to get my score up. Two horrible thoughts crossed my mind. The first was that he’d actually succeed in taking a couple of cities, dropping my score significantly; the second was that Washington would pull off a successful counter-attack, triggering that domination win I was so desparately trying to avoid. (Imagine 1 turn from your final spaceship component, and getting a domination win… Horrible … Awful… )

Not good. The turn he declares, two stacks arrive at the gates of Harappan (captured from Hannibal in the last war). Total, about 30 units. Artillary, tanks, gunships. By depopulating neighbouring cities of military, I got 40 defenders into Harappan but they were mostly grenadiers and cannon, with just a few artillery and armoured infantry. Enough to hold the city for 1 round of fighting, but I was anticipating a massacre of my defenders. I sacrificed most of my artillery to try and cause as much collateral damage as I could to his southern stack, in the hope of evening the odds. And I set science to zero so I could pay to upgrade units the next turn.

The something interesting happened. Hannibal didn’t bother bombarding my defences, he just threw all his artillery at the city, losing most of them in the process, and then he took out a few units with his northern stack gunships. If he’d used his southern stack too, I’d have faced serious losses, but he didn’t. Hmmm. Wonder if that means that he won’t attack with injured units… So the next turn I tried sacrificing some of my cannon (and newly arrived artillery) on his northern stack. Sure enough, the collateral-damaged stack didn’t attack on his turn, it just stayed there, presumably to heal. That was Hannibal’s suicide move. On my next turn, I now had upgraded most of my cannon and some grenadiers, and I could make my move. Within two more turns his entire stacks were both destroyed. The result on the power graph was incredible. Evidently he’d thrown half his entire military at Harappan, and I had nothing more to fear from him, other than annoying pillaging raids every turn by his fighters, which I could do nothing about coz I didn’t have flight.

How the mighty fall. Thought I’d include this screenshot of the powergraph of how Hannibal’s military collapsed in his attack on Harappan. So much for more intelligent AI with the 2.08 patch…

Questions… Pollution and Praetorians

Spoiler :

Two things left me puzzled in this game.
1. When do Praetorians go obsolete? I’m sure at one point I found my cities could build grenadiers …. or praetorians. Weird, huh?
2. What causes global warming? I was under the impression that in Civ4, only nuclear weapons could cause global warming, yet twice in my late game I encountered messages that global warming had hit some city. Noone had even built the Manhattan project.

Broken Features?

Spoiler :

I also noticed two things that I think are broken in Civ4 and need fixing.
1. Twice in the game, I tried demanding gold off a weaker Civ gold when I really intended to go to war. The instant the civ gave me its gold, I declared war, without even leaving the diplomacy window. That’s daft, it means there’s no reason for the AI to ever accede to a human’s demands if you can do that. Surely there ought to be some guarantee of peace for a few turns if the AI gives you something?
2. Why does war weariness affect you immediately someone else declares war on you? That happened to me on Hannibal’s final war declaration, and I’m sure cost me some population. Shouldn’t war weariness only affect you when you start the war (or you’ve been prolonging it)?

Marathon and the Victory

Spoiler :

All I can say is – I’m impressed at the people who got their spacerace victories in faster than I did. Towards the end of the game, I was raking in over 3500 beakers/turn in science. It was incredible: Mass media took I think 3 turns to research (at this point I was just accumulating techs to add to my score). Flight was 4 turns. On marathon too! I also managed through careful management (and advanced building of laboratories) to get the time between completing the Apollo program and completing the spaceship down to just 33 turns. I think on marathon speed that’s not bad going! Yet several other people still managed to get faster spaceship wins! (presumably, less conquering initially contributed).

I think one impact of marathon was psychological – in making you play more carefully. The way it worked was this: I’d look at the game and think something like, ‘Eeek! 27 turns to civil service???? That’s awful, I gotta do something to get my science up’. Of course if I’d been on normal speed in the exact same situation, I’d be thinking ‘9 turns to civil service. That sounds reasonable…’ Turns to city growth work the same way, and I kept making me maximize food output much more as a result. I wonder if that’s one reason why my spacerace victory was miles earlier than I’ve ever achieved before? I did notice that, despite my using slavery extensively until very late in the game, by the time I was in the 1600’s most of my cities were near to maxing out on pop (Bibracte had actually reached size 28!), that’s never happened to me so early before either.