Intermediate Game 2 Discussion Thread

[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/showpost.php?p=3697833&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,