Intermediate Game 2 Discussion Thread

[Nugog]

Intermediate League Game 2 has closed for submissions. Please feel free to discuss your game in as much detail as you want. The more we talk, the more we can learn from each others successes and failures......

Lots of submissions, and a good mix of victory types :

The top three :

1st: jbp26 : Won Domination Victory - 1890AD - 6086 points / 66935 points

2nd: Solver : Won Domination Victory - 1919AD - 6477 points / 53498 points
3rd: Theseus : Won Domination Victory - 1931AD - 6271 points / 41622 points

4th: Saygame : Won Domination Victory - 1964AD - 6938 points / 32442 points

Congratulations!!!!

Solver has agreed to pass on his HOF points to the next person in line, so Theseus gets 2nd place points and Saygame gets 3rd place points. Thanks Solver for your generosity!!! Solver does however keep his score which are counted towards the ongoing tally.......

The rest.........

JeffreZ : Won Diplomatic Victory - 1914AD - 3863 points / 28504 points
DarkAmen : Won Cultural Victory - 1928AD - 4244 points / 25536 points
draethor : Won Cultural Victory - 1844AD - 2238 points / 23999 points
EPW : Won Cultural Victory - 1907AD - 2112 points / 16539 points
caeru71 : Won Space Race Victory - 1966AD - 3763 points / 14141 points
Chuckman : Won Space Race Victory - 1987AD - 3442 points / 10443 points

ColdPhoenix : Lost to Space Race - 1993AD - 6710 points / 20502 points - LOST
MikeH : Lost to Space Race - 2008AD - 4863 points / 13146 points - LOST
Kinjiru : Lost to Conquest - 1390AD - 302 points / 6439 points - LOST

seelx : VOID Retired - 1872AD - 695 points / 6845 points - VOID

[draethor]

Well, I had a lot of fun with this game.

I've actually never played as Shaka, but after reading about the Impi, I thought the beginning few turns of my game would be very straightforward. Check out my neighbors, find out who doesn't have metal, and rush them.

After playing for 40 or 50 turns, I really wanted to come here and post "I see what you guys did here...." Monty, Genghis Khan... a swarm of aggressive leaders. Ack.

Anyway, I noticed pretty immediately that Monty didn't have any copper. Genghis Khan did, and was already mining it So Monty was my first target.

I first made it a priority to found a second town. There's gold south of the start location, and the research boost it provides in the early game is a massive advantage, so I hooked that up as soon as possible. I then used both towns to crank out Impi, and declared war on Monty early (even though I only had a couple of Impi in the area, he couldn't challenge them with archers and I was able to prevent him from expanding or improving his tiles).

I killed Monty around 800 BC, by which time he had been nice enough to found judaism and hinduism. So at this point, I seriously considered going for a cultural victory. I reasoned it would be difficult given the choices of AIs, but with two founding religions it's a pretty strong thing to shoot for.

My game was pretty uneventful until around 1000 AD. I maintained a decent tech lead, and warred several times with genghis khan (neither of us made much progress though - I took a couple of his towns but the RNG was against me and I always lost a lot more units than I normally should've).

At 1000 AD I invaded Catherine. She had founded Buddhism and spread it all over the world, which irritated me because I forgot to open borders with everyone immediately and so couldn't spread my religion everywhere for an early diplo win (everyone was now a different religion from me so they wouldn't open borders). I also figured her holy city which had built the Buddhist holy building would generate a ton of gold for me.

This is where things went horribly wrong. I didn't intend to kill Catherine (only to take her most productive cities), and so had what I figured would be enough units to take 3 or 4 towns. I attacked one of her cities though, and lost 3 macemen - at an 89% chance to win, then a 91% chance, then a 96% chance - against the only defender left in the town. The town was reinforced the next turn, so I had to back off.

I had decided around this time that a cultural victory would be the most viable, however, I counted on Catherine's holy city and the other one I couldn't capture in my 9-town tally. I sued for peace and got it, but I ended up getting screwed.

This occurred because I razed one of Catherine's towns that I didn't think was worth keeping (tons of tiles overlapping her capital/holy city). What I didn't realize, is how slowly cultural population decreases in neutral territory, or in enemy territory. After suing for peace, Catherine rebuilt that town, as a level one town. However, within about 100 turns, its cultural borders had completely choked out her capital/holy city, and even with the capital/holy city generating over 40 culture/turn by the end of the game, I kept losing territory (and my population even 1 tile away from that city was only 33% over 200 turns later). So when I first captured the city, I had the standard cross, which was eventually reduced to just a single tile, even though it generated at least 12 culture per turn from the second I captured it.

This was a huge problem for me because I wasn't able to open borders with Catherine for the rest of the game. I had planned on using that city to spam a bunch of temples in, but instead had to squeeze in another town at the last minute. All told, this probably shaved 50 turns off of my win (it took far longer to spread Buddhism, and even though I made sure my lower culture towns got the cathedrals first, it was way slower).

If I had simply taken my war with Catherine a little further and hadn't razed any towns, not only would my victory have been at least 50 turns earlier, but my ending score would've been higher. Well, guess I've learned my lesson!

In any case, great game, thanks you guys for making it

[MikeH]

More later when I have more time. I lost, but only barely. I had a horrible time early on and got involved in some stupid wars, especially against that psycho Monty. I was barely at peace at any point in the game. Once we got to Cavalry I started to do better, vasselised Genghis, Monty, Tokagowa, Mehmet II, and Huyana Cuypac. By this time it was modern armour combat and I was involved in a brutal war of attrition against the technologically superior Gilgamesh. I think I'd have won that with the help of my 5 vassals, and his territory would have just about given me the win but then Catherine's space ship arrived. Ok, it wasn't that close, but considering the start it ended up closer than I thought it would. I was never realistically in a position to fight my buddy Catherine.

[Nugog]

Originally posted by draethor
After playing for 40 or 50 turns, I really wanted to come here and post "I see what you guys did here...." Monty, Genghis Khan... a swarm of aggressive leaders. Ack.

Originally posted by draethor
This is where things went horribly wrong. *snip*

It sounds as though it did.

Originally posted by draethor
In any case, great game, thanks you guys for making it

Thanks - glad you enjoyed it even though it did not turn out so well for you.

[EPW]

Things went horribly wrong in my cultural victory as well...more on that later...

[MikeH]

Originally posted by draethor
After playing for 40 or 50 turns, I really wanted to come here and post "I see what you guys did here...." Monty, Genghis Khan... a swarm of aggressive leaders. Ack.

Haha, me too. In fact I sent Rob a PM along those lines.

Looking back at my notes from the beginning (I stopped making them due to laziness/time pressure) I remembered that I moved on the first turn to the hill to the south of where the settler started. I moved for the defensive bonus because I was worried about the raging barbs. Turned out that hill had the copper in it which was a massive bonus.

I decided early on to go for a domination victory, or if possible to vasselise everyone and get a conquest victory. It seemed like I'd have to go heavily military with the opposition I was facing and the raging barbs, plus that's my natural style anyway. I was worried about Huyana, often he ends up quietly teching away in very aggressive games, so I very stupidly rushed him, eventually captured his first expansion but failed to get his capital. In the end a very bad first war that had me on the back foot for the rest of the game. With hindsight, this lost me the game.

Eventually after a couple of skirmishes with Monty I turned west and crushed Genghis just enough for him to let Monty Vasselise him. This led me into a series of huge wars against Monty which I thought were going to destroy me. Every time I had a slight tech lead and he had a massive numerical advantage which threatened to overwhelm me. Eventually I got him to waste two huge attacking stacks on two hastily assembled defensive stacks of riflemen and the tide turned. I rolled him over quickly and vasselised him and Ghengis. The next target was tricky. Catherine had a massive lead in tech and military. Cyrus, Huyana and Gilgamesh had tech leads. Tokugawa was the next largest civ after me, was already at war with me (although I'd seen none of his units), was technologically backward so he seemed the obvious choice. But he'd just vasselised Mehmet II and had one of the largest militaries in the game. Huyana it was. He had good tech, but just not enough units. Once I'd seen him off I marched east to take out Toku and Mehmet taking both on at the same time at reckless speed because Catherine was building spaceship parts. Once I vasselised those two I had Cyrus, Gilgamesh and Catherine left, they all had big armies and better tech than me.

Gilgamesh looked weakest so I went for him.
Ideally I'd have licked my wounds and built up an overwhelming force to attack him with but at that point Catherine launched (it'd been coming) I knew speed was of the essence and hoped that if I rushed in and grabbed a couple of cities fast I could get Gilgamesh to surrender and it might just tip me over into a domination win (it'd have been close). I grabbed the cities, but he didn't give in, knowing wisely that he had a huge force to counterattack with.

The game ended with me embroiled in a war of attrition with Gilgamesh that I probably would have won eventually through weight of numbers but was by no means a sure thing.

I probably needed to risk taking on Catherine earlier in the game but I was too busy butting heads with Monty (I was much too stubborn to let him beat me...) who was at that time the major power in the game. I also knew I could keep Catherine sweet as long as I kept the same religion as her, something you just can't do with Mad Monty.

Also it turns out that a domination win at normal speed on a large map is a very difficult prospect. I have a feeling that on Epic speed the slight military edge might have let me sneak in with a win... we'll never know.

This was my first time on a large map, and with raging barbs and I haven't played normal speed since Vanilla so it was great to get outside my comford zone. Great game guys, thanks for setting it up.

[Solver]

Okay, what do I remember...

The opponents didn't quite make it easy. However, the map was very good IMO. You have some immediately accessible happiness resources near the start - Gold and Furs. And with some expansion to the west, you can decrease Genghis's land area.

I played the religion game absolutely wrong. Catherine got Buddhism and spread it to me but I didn't adopt so as not to piss the rest off. But then I founded Confucianism and later adopted it even though only Genghis had it - that was a bad move. In the end, no long-term friendships for me.

Given that I was Shaka, I was planning to play aggressively, but actually delayed that a bit. I had an early skirmish with Montezuma when he took a city spot I wanted - and it helped keep him in check. After getting Iron, I built up an army and conquered him, that was the easy part. Earlier, I had built the Great Wall to counter those raging barbs. Turned out to be a good idea. When I got the Great Spy, I infiltrated Russia, as Catherine seemed to be the most advanced AI civ. So that gave me about 4 stolen techs in the first half of the game - early Great Spies, particularly from the Great Wall, are indeed very powerful.

I didn't handle the Mongols correctly, either. When I attacked Montezuma for the second time, to eliminate him, Genghis declared war on me for whatever reason. All I did in response was take a border city, but I left taking him out for later without actually having a good reason to do so.

And the post-Guilds time was when it all started. I took Mongols out, vassalizing them, rather quickly. At that point, I was doing quite well in research, thanks to some Wonders, and was continuously pumping out units. Huayna Capac and Catherine were clearly the two big threats - the only civs I had to really worry about. Tokugawa was remote and, as usually, backwards, Suleiman seemed content to sit there and research, while Cyrus just didn't worry me much.

So I was thinking about invading Russia but, despite my large army, wasn't sure I could win the war without losing the bulk of my forces. Then I got lucky. Catherine declared war on the Incans. Yay! I waited on the Russian border for some 5 turns, while the initial fighting took place, going slightly in Capac's favor. Then I declared war on Catherine myself and conquered her. Another vassal. Got my first few Grenadiers during this war (if the game had been on Epic, it'd be completely awesome).

Russia had built up some good stuff. After some rebuilding, it turned out that Moscow was a nice cashcow (Buddhist holy city and all), with a few good hammer cities as well. So I started preparing for an attack on the Incans. The good thing here was, the culture from some of my cities was really pushing up against them. So when I attacked, I did so with a huge force, and I struck from three directions. One stack attacked the western part of their lands, coming from former Russia, two more entered at different points from the north. Thanks to the element of surprise, I took a city on the first turn of the war as well. Yay!

It was a good war, decided by me having a few high-production and high-XP cities. I had the West Point and the Heroic Epic at that point, as well as a few (3 or 4) settled Generals. So some of my cities were really cranking out well-promoted units. I just had too much total production capacity, so took the Incans, by the end of that war Infantry started to form the bulk of my force.

In the meanwhile, I had experienced a good Persian attack that caught me off-guard and took two cities, but I was able to retake them and decided to sign peace with no further action.

After conquering the Incans, I was almost at the Domination threshold. I ended up attacking an Ottoman city that was close to me for that extra land. That worked, and interestingly Suleiman countered by moving a stack of 40-50 units into my land. Thanks to rails, I took em all out on a single turn. That was a bloody turn. There, it didn't take long to reach Domination, just needed those 2% or so more of land.

Good game

[Solver]

Originally posted by Nugog
1st: jbp26 : Won Domination Victory - 1890AD - 6086 points / 66935 points

2nd: Solver : Won Domination Victory - 1919AD - 6477 points / 53498 points
3rd: Theseus : Won Domination Victory - 1931AD - 6271 points / 41622 points

4th: Saygame : Won Domination Victory - 1964AD - 6938 points / 32442 points

Okay, I guess Shaka really is better for warmongering

[Nugog]

He sure is.

[EPW]

Whats the prize for getting the worst winning score?

Edit: never mind, you're using normalized points now which bumps me up a bit...

[SpencerH]

I didnt get a chance to finish this one but I wouldnt have won anyway I was so far behind in techs since I had been at war since virtually the begining of the game. I dislike civ4's combat system and never play as a warmonger. That being said the impis were great.

Ghengis attacked me fairly early on so I used scorched earth by impis and horse archers to obliterate his ability to wage war. After taking 3 of his cities, the war was halted by my religious brethren. No prob it'll give me a chance to catch up science-wise. Hmm, Ghengis is ahead of me in science with his 5 decimated cities!!! So of course he attacks again. Now I take his capital and leave him with 2 cities before my brethren step in again. Hmm, a short time later Ghengis is ahead of me in science with his 2 decimated cities!!! Something stinks!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course Monte now attacks and after losing 1 small city I can hold my own against HIS MORE ADVANCED TROOPS but not attack since I still have rock wielding urchins to defend my empire against his curiaraseurs (forget the spelling, its French). Strangely he declares war on Catherine who virtually has modern inf and she kicks his butt. Monte becomes her slave but Mehmed who was Monte's vassal stays at war with me and will NEVER sue for peace. Strangely, his science rockets ahead so the last turn I recall he had modern units while I had muskets.

All in all, it's an example of why I didnt buy the warmonger XP that came out before BtS.

[jbp26]

i have never played shaka before so i was a little nervous. i started off with quick expansion, of course. i also took that coastal spot around gold as my second city, which contributed a lot of research. with shaka two bonuses are immedietly apparent- 1, the impi move quickly so i needed less of them to defend a large empire (ie, more money for expansion), and 2, barracks also reduced maintenance and made stronger impi, while taking virtually no time to build. so i whipped barracks in every new city and kept on producing settles, impi, and axemen. since i had stone and my capitol was a real production powerhouse, i managed to score stonehenge as well, which helped my expansion immensely.


initial exploration yielded mongols to the west, aztecs to the east, and russians to the south. initially i was going to try and put a few cities to the south to block the russian expansion into my territory, but i decided against it. that land was all jungles, and id rather let htem clean it up for me. also since i had stonehenge and neither of my neighbors were creative, i knew i'd win border wars. so i aggresively expanded as deeply into their territory as i could. this was very effective in forcing montezuma and ghengis into sub-optimal territory. once there was no more room for expansion i just built granaries, courthouses, impi and axemen. i think hinduism, which was the dominant religion of the land, spread to me at some point around here.

i was out of expansion room and my economy was still ok, so it was time for war. i had been spying on my neighbors, montezuma and ghengis khan, so i checked their power graphs. khan was way behind in tech but way ahead in power, and monty was below in both, so i sent in the troops. they rolled over him in no time- he had kind of been forced to expand into the jungle, and virtually none of it was removed. jungle terrain really seemd to give the AI trouble in this game. Anyway I wiped him out, and the real prize here was his second city, which was a double holy city for the two major religions of the game. this was a huge stroke of luck.

and in an even better turn of events the turn before i took that precious city, it generated a great prophet, which went to founding the second holy city (they already had the first). so not only did i capture a double holy city, icaptured it with both shrines intact.

that decided the rest of the game. with the income from the double holy city and the spoils of war, i could expand at will while saying #1 in tech. i rotated cities to pumping out missionaries, units and infrastructures. ghengis declared war on me next with his huge army of keshiks- unfortunately for him i had been building impi the whole time in anticipation of this. he was smashed. actually that was the only interesting part of the rest of the game. i conquered russia and the incas without incident, and won a domination victory.

[RobWorham]

Congratulations jbp26!!!

[Solver]

Ow, you really got lucky there with the double holy city. If I had that happen to me, I'd beat ya

[MikeH]

This is probably a really dumb question... but how exactly is the score calculated? (I did look in the FAQ first...)

[Solver]

It's the normalized score that appears at the end of the game (HoF) when you finish it.

[EPW]

I had a very strong start during this game. I expanded quickly to take advantage of the gold to the south, and expanded fairly rapidly. I was also able to build a couple of wonders. I then looked westered towards the land of the Mongolians.

They ended up attacking me a few turns before I attacked them. I was prepared, and conquered Mongolia within 100 turns. I was in a strong position to pursue a domination victory at this point, but for whatever reason I got the idea that a cultural Victory would be better.

For the Mid-game I worked on spreading religions around my empire and increasing cultural.

Sometime in the late middle ages the Russians decided to attack me. They were able to capture one of my southeastern cities north of their border. I built troups in my non-culture cities and was eventually able to push CAtherine out and sue for peace.

Life were peaceful up until the 1800s when I was nearing my cultural Victory. There were come big wars going on in the east lead by my close friend Monte, and it appeared that I would coast to an easy victory before 1900.

The Russians had a different idea. They surprised me with a huge army of cossacks and siege units who once again invaded my south eastern border. After there first attack I had continued to built units for defense, and I rushed them south. Russia easily took back the city she had captured earlier, and preceded to go after my other 3 southern cities. I was able to put up some resistance in the next city with 15+ riflemen, but they were crushed after a few turns. Catherine went on to capture one more southern city and was heading towards one of my main cultural cities when I was able to make peace in exchange for my last southern city.

At this point I was within ~20 turns of victory though my score was on the decline.

I thought the worst was over, but Monte and his vassal (i can't remember who) decided they would put an end to my empire.
They sent one huge stack at my core southern culture city that Catherine had threatened earlier, and a smaller force invaded from the north.

I sent all of my military into the city, including some cannons. By the time they reached the city, I was with 5 turns of victory. I was, however, greatly out matched.

At the same time, to the north, Monte had managed to capture a city and was threatening the capitol. The capitol was defended by a lone swordsman behind 80% defense. One Cuirassier managed to attack it, but my swordsman won

Back at the main siege, I was able to delay Monte's force long enough to win. I did this by attacking with my cannons, which resulted in his cannons being his strongest units. I was then able to kill off most of his cannons by sallying out. Since the AI wont attack until the cities' defenses are 0, this delayed his attack long enough for me to win.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Solver
It's the normalized score that appears at the end of the game (HoF) when you finish it.

Oh ok. I misunderstood then, I thought someone was doing something cleverer based on end date.

[Nugog]

The normalised score does take into account end date, victory type, difficulty and all sorts of other stuff - thankfully the game does it for us....

[MikeH]

Excellent, that's fine. I even know how that's calculated thanks to someone who posted it at Civ Fanatics...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpo...33&postcount=6

I was thinking there was someone doing something more clever.

Basically it's the three Ps. Population, Population, Population.

[DarkAmen]

Well; here's what I remember.

Impis were great for early worker steals; I think I crippled both Ghengis and Monty by parking an impi and waiting for a workers; declaring a cease fire and then repeating. Whilst doing this I hooked up nearby happy resources by founding cities and expanding West and South. I wiped Ghegis out on the 3rd delaration of war; lots of impis. I only kept his capital and raised all his others - eventually in the late game rebuilding them.

I'd also started to move South for happiness and was wonder building like a drug crazed addict. As with most others Cathy was spreading buddhism but I had conf so I built St Peter's. This ruined the entire game as I had no idea what it was doing; I thought I'd be Gods voice on earth but instead Cathy was and due to her spreading religion allmost won diplomatic early; at no point in the game did I ever figure out how to use the thing - it effectively ruled out domination and conquest because Cathy could allways vote to end war - lots of red faces if I were to defy. So whilst wander building I took out Monty and kept his Eastern cities whilst leaving the middle ground unpopulated - there was 20+ squares gap between my capital and Monty's captured land. So then I spent ages filling that in and building courthoues. Just before finishing Monty off; Cathy declared war on me; so I rushed an impi defence and pummled her stacks and went after her. I admire the AI here; she used her 1:1 relationship with God to end the war and I didn't have the happiness to go to continue the war with her.

From then on I tried various means to gain control of St Peter's but nothing worked. I used spies to force her to switch religion; but then Hyuna got control. After Cathy asked for DP I got straight into bed with her and rushed for communism to try and get the PA and then go for a domination win. At the time I was looking for a normal diplomacy win - however it must have been late as I managed to get a defensive pact with the person everyone hated as I confused one leader with another. So by the time I rushed to communism and found PAs were off the books I knew I messed every thing up; what could I mess up further. That's right I could mess my cultural win up. Founding a very late GP farm I was able to get the farm up and running making just artists; however all my wander building early days meant that 2 or 3 turns before my guaranteed GA from my farm came I made a great profit or a great prophet; neither of which was much use. I think in those last turns I made 2 GAs from my farm and 5 other great people else where.

You live and learn!

[fed1943]

Too late to be counted, just finish the game: anyway just 31.051,
tried domination,but it was diplomatic win.

From the comments, it looks not very different from Solver's.

Settled on place, worker, 2nd city to the south,then quick Wonders.

I decided (never sure if it was good or wrong) to build Stonehenge
to speed next cities; then GW, obviously.

2nd city settled 4th and 5th, while capital settled 3rd to west, under
the philosophie Mongols attack all living beings, so i choose where.

Then capital built Oracle (for MC) and Pyramids (Representation).

Founded Judaism; my first and next GP were Prophets.

Conquered Mongols (they were the atackers,of course).

Later, vasssalized Russians, Aztecs, Incans; much later, Persians,
this last I attacked (always checked if vassal possible and accepted
immediately, lest they choose another master).

Pure cottage economy; GPP just from Wonders and free specialists.

Could have won much before; but unsure if a vassal could be in
the UN race or could not vote by me.

[JeffreZ]

I settled by moving to the silk tile, i was hoping for an extra happy straight off but was disappointed, I then teched mining first whilst building a worker, then bronze working, in 3440BC my scout walked on a hut that gifted him bronze working saving me about 8 turns i think. In this time hinduism and buddhism were born and i met cyrus (i was looking forward to his immortals having a bit of impi iron). Next teched animal husbrandy (was very glad i didnt need the wheel, nice copper location!) looking to see if there were any horses near by to take out axemen, didnt see any usuable but moved to writing and subsequently alphabet for tech trades.
During this time i bump into monty and signed an open border with him and i spy the holy aztec buddhist city, Im looking at this thing and all its got are two warriors, no archers or anything, my three impi were dribbling at the prospect, whilst i was waiting for the OB to pass I built up some more impis and am getting confused why monty jus has these two warriors, i build more impi and line seven of them up on him, check his city and hes been fussing around building a missionary, i cancelled open borders and next turn took his city for no loss in 1960BC.
At this point I figured the Impi rush was definitley going to be the way forward so slotted an ikhwanda in the aztec city and started making impi, i had some more coming from ulundi and was checkin out GKs territory. I saw the first barbs at about 1880 so redistributed some impi to cover them, as GK had archers i didnt feel i had enough impi to take him on, time later i figured.
At about this point i noticed that there wasnt much religion spreading going on, in fact no one bar the founding civs had converted, so i decided to get in on the action, traded for meditation and slotted a monastery in the aztec city. I decided to send out missionaries escorted by an impi as maybe the reason why religion was spreading was so slow was because everyones missionaries were being eaten up by barbs. I managed to get cyrus, gilgamesh and tokugawa on side. the highlight was gifting toku techs for OB and then just as i neared his lands seeing a weasely confucionist miss coming up from mehmeds lands and getting toku to stop OB with mehmed in return for my gifting him preisthood or something.
I still hadnt attcked GK, had noticed my unit and supply costs were going up very quickly (so was hesititant of getting the military might together to take GK down) and seeing vast tracts of uninhabited land to both sides made me decide to get a nice cottage spam economy going and supplement this with income from the religion. During this process i grabbed the oracle too for metal casting and started thinking about the great prophet coming from that wonder. I was originally going to use this guy for shrine, but then started thinking about the Apostolic Palace. Id never built this before and having read a number of threads where u can lose ridiciculous victorires to this thing thought it would be nice to get this, especially as cyrus and toku through and thriugh buddhist and id like them to fight the infidel. Consequently i fortuitiously got my tech path to give me theology as the light bulb from my first GP (i threw a temple and priest specialist in the mix to hurry it along) and built the palace, it completed in 450AD.
I found the A.Palace particulary useful in my cottage spam cities as the hammers from having a monastery and temple really boosted the production speed of markets and grocers, i also got the spiral minaet and uni of sangkore which i felt stacked very well, i dont think ive ever teched so fast at certain points. The funnest use of the palace though in my mind was using it to get everyone to cancel their deals with catherine (who was the hindu founder if i recall correctly), by the end of the game she despised nearly everyone except for HC (who was also a hindu).

GK finally got bored of being penned in by me and DoWd me on 720AD, this was pretty much a cold war for the first 500 years despite some of his Keshiks stealing the odd worker and then by about 1300AD I started chewing up his land and even managed to get a holy war started against him, although i didnt see another of the buddhist civs military until i was just about to take his final city.

I then spent the next few hundred years teching along, Catherine had grabbed that large chunk of peninsularly land to the west so she had lots of coastal cities, so i built lots of privateers and blockaded a large tract of her coast in the hope this kept her GNP down (id considered this in other games but never tried it), the AI ignored chemistry so these little raiders were around for a long while and although her GNP didnt decrease a huge amount at the start of the blockade, when i did finally life it her GNP shot up a good 30%.

The end game involved HC declaring on me for a weakly defended border city which he grabbed, i waded into his land with large stacks of rifles and cannons, he vassalised to catherine after a bit and i romped through a large part of her lands with artillery and infantry grabbing a few big cities. I made peace after a while and the UN was built, i didnt quite have enough votes to win the first few rounds but got HC to vassal to me (i forget when he devassalised from catherine) and at the fourth attempt got a Dip Win in 1914AD (Tokugawa, who was my biggest buddy the whole game, voted for himself and mehmed voted for him, Gilgamesh, Cyrus and HC voted for me.

This was a very fun map, although i was fortunate saving 8 turns on BW with the goody hut and then picking off Monty early game with no loss of life for a shrine city. I really meant to play an aggressive game but reverted to type (i get DW more than most other types of victory) and other than my inital DoW on monty never declared war again!

[RobWorham]

[Saygame]

If we are judging simply by year of finish and raw score, it seems to me we are penalizing guys who go for cultural victories like Draethor did this game with an impressive early 1800's cultural victory that also lacked an impressive score. And devalues Space Race, which typically ends later in the game in my experience, from viable contention.

Civ's scoring system favors "conqueror style" with its emphasis on population and land vis a vis early finishing. Vassaling a nation and colonzing adds an intricacy to scoring. They sometimes help and sometimes hurt scoring under this emphasis.

Maybe future scenarios could sometimes tighten and simplify their victory condiitons to "Earliest Cultural or Space Victory" to give those victory conditions a better shot.

Just a thought.

[JeffreZ]

I would enjoy games with defined victories as saygame suggests, i certainly have a favored playing style (ie non space for example) and would like being "forced" to go for alternative strategies.

[Nugog]

Saygame & Jeffrez

We will be, in later games, stipulating certain victory conditions that must be obtained.

We are just working through a options of the best way to do this (game mechanics wise) - so that it doesn't nerf the AI too much.

[fed1943]

And what about a legal, not mechanical, rule, that forbids the
players, but not AI, to go to said victory?

Is it possible? And good?

Best regards,