Gamesmanship and Strategy

[Dactyl]

I've been following the threads here rather closely and following a lot of the strategic suggestions that I've found. However, I've come to some conclusions that bother me.

My opinion is that, from the point of view of gamesmanship, it's cheating to cherry-pick start locations or to reload a game because you don't like what happened. This might be excusable when testing strategies, but otherwise it is not.

That said, a lot of risky strategies have been suggested. When they work, they give you a great leg up, but when they fail, you could end up well behind in development. For example, there has been a lot of discussions of the game openings where you build settlers and workers first without protecting them. The workers chop forests to generate quick settlers thereby letting you quickly get at least four cities up and going. This is a high risk strategy because, at least on the Monarch level where I've been playing, there is a small but significant chance that you will lose an early settler or worker. However, I have not seen any discussion of the best strategy to pursue if this happens. My guess is that it is because, when it does happen, people give up on the game. If that is the case, from the point of view of gamesmanship, that is no different from cherry-picking an starting location.

Here's another example. One suggested strategy is to go for the Pyramids early, while chopping forests to get them before the AI. This is an extremely risky strategy because there is a chance that you won't get the Pyramids even after having wasted a lot of turns building them, not to mention wasting the forests that you have chopped. You are really holding the bag, if that happens, but I've seen no discussion of a fallback strategy in that case and again I suspect that people just give up on the game. As I said above, that's no different to me than cherry-picking starting locations.

It is my opinion that all strategies should be presented as strategies that are viable for playing through to the end and winning. Analyses of these strategies should include discussions of and suggestions of what to do in case things don't work out as expected. It should NEVER be the intention of a strategy to give up and quit if certain goals aren't met, and it should always be possible to present avenues to victory.

[vmxa1]

I don't disagree with your points, but as I recall those strategies were aimed at Prince and often Noble.

It was pointed out that some would be quite a risk above Prince. That was about where I mentioned all strategies needed to put into the context of the game being used.

IOW what level and settings were they talking about. It mattered in III for most things, same here.

[knighterrant]

On several occasions I am put in a "crappy" location to start with. I find it fun and interesting to see if I can turn that around into something that works.

So far, I've been able to pull out and stay about average in score but I generally do not win. That wasn't the point for me, however. I would like to get some credit for doing such a stupendous job given my crappy starting location. Alas, I get rated as Dan Quayle anyway.

But, yes, what you describe is something I talked about with other people and the reasons I eventually stop playing the older civ games. Eventually the way to win is to not play the game but "game" the system.

[DeepO]

Real bad starting positions are an exception in this game: if you get a bad start, chances are the map is simply hard globally and not many nice spots were available.

I agree that too little talk goes into redundancy strategies, and how to recuperate from a loss. Normally, you will find more information on this in the AU, but still, people don't like to advertise the games they didn't perform well in. That doesn't mean that it's not part of your overal strategy, though.

Myself, I tend to play out situations where I get caught off guard. A high risk builder strategy where I get overrun is such an example: It can teach you a lot at what the best strategies for war are: when you don't have plenty of units around, each one has to count. And it again involves risks: are you going to finish that barracks you were working on, or build a warrior right away, and a barracks later? Are you going to save on a promotion (excellent redundancy strategy, BTW), or attack a pillager now and expose yourself at less than optimal health?

In my case, many testgames will end early in case I got shafted on high risk gambles. But only once I dealt with the situation, and get to a stable point similar to what I've experienced before. Main reason for that is that I can't invest the time to play out every single game I start, and I'm at a point where winning is less important than learning.

DeepO

[Bobby Chicken]

In civ 4, all starting spots are simillar in value. Risky strategies are only good if you can't win without them. Its not cheating; you know you're not as good as someone who can win without such a strategy; there is nothing wrong with seeing if you can win against a AI you couldn't normally beat.

[Aeson]

Cheating is a rather harsh word. No need for it here. Save it for the competitions where rules are being broken. "Too risky" is a valid argument, leave it at that.

Chopping for a Wonder is a risk, but hardly a game breaking one. Unescorted Settlers can be a pretty big risk, but can be minimal depending on the settings, type of landmass, what you do with your starting unit, and where you plant your cities. Worker first is almost always safe in SP on low-mid difficulty levels, and even on higher difficulty levels can have the risk minimized or non-existant depending on the settings.

As for who gives up and who plays on when things go bad, does it really matter? Guessing is just that, guessing. It's a derogatory point of view you are guessing at. Hardly seems a valuable point to post.

[khumak]

Originally posted by Bobby Chicken
In civ 4, all starting spots are simillar in value.

I've found this to be completely false. I've had starts with up to 6 special resources within my first city's "fat cross" while also having access to stone, marble, copper, and iron within my first 3 or 4 cities. I would consider that to be an amazingly good start and extremely unusual. I've also started on a small mostly tundra continent all alone with no access to stone, marble, copper, or iron at all and zero or 1 special resource within my border. I would consider that a horrible start and be at an obvious disadvantage compared to the prior situation.

Risky strategies are only good if you can't win without them. Its not cheating; you know you're not as good as someone who can win without such a strategy; there is nothing wrong with seeing if you can win against a AI you couldn't normally beat.

There's nothing wrong with focusing on a strategy that has some risk to it. The key is risk vs reward and what your chances of recovery are if something goes wrong. If you take a risky strategy to such an extreme that you are almost guaranteed to lose if anything goes wrong then you've got a bad strategy. The risk is way too high regardless what the reward is. A risk that doesn't pan out should be a minor setback not a game ending disaster.

On the other hand if you take a risky strategy and tweak it a bit so that it gives you a big advantage if it pays off while only hitting you with a minor setback if it doesn't then you've improved your game considerably.

There's also the matter of whether you're just testing out a new strategy to see how it works and how it needs to be tweaked or whether you plan on playing a whole game all the way through. If I get an idea for a new strategy I'll frequently wind up saving at various points and trying it out a bunch of different ways to see how it works (or doesn't).

A good example is the chop rushing settler tactic. That can give you a significant advantage because of the early cities but if you take it to such an extreme that you don't build any military units at all before your first 2 or 3 cities then all it takes for disaster is 1 roaming wolf and you're suddenly WAY behind. Building a settler or worker is a big enough cost considering build time and lack of city growth that I NEVER send either of them out unescorted.

[cal_01]

Originally posted by DeepO
Myself, I tend to play out situations where I get caught off guard. A high risk builder strategy where I get overrun is such an example: It can teach you a lot at what the best strategies for war are: when you don't have plenty of units around, each one has to count. And it again involves risks: are you going to finish that barracks you were working on, or build a warrior right away, and a barracks later? Are you going to save on a promotion (excellent redundancy strategy, BTW), or attack a pillager now and expose yourself at less than optimal health?

I once had Bears camping right next to my capital in the beginning. He promptly ate all my scouts and warriors.

Anyhow, the moral of the story was that I didn't quit even when both my first scout and warrior got eaten. I still pushed forward!

(I promptly quit after the 3rd scout got eaten though. :P)

[Blake]

I've had games on raging barbarians when the barbarians simply win every fight and destroy me, it's very frustrating when an Axeman enters a fight with your archer at bad odds (say 30%, archer in a city on a hill) and wins without a stratch (boggle), next turn murderizes the warrior (bye city). What can you do when you take very reasonable precautions, yet the random number generator hates you?
The anwser is to take unreasonable precautions like 3-4 archers for every city, but those axes can come very early...

It's something I think about. The gamemanship and rerolling and stuff.

I'm at the point where ANY start on Noble is easy, any start on prince is doable, but on Monarch a bad start will make quit.

What about restarting on noble starts when they are too easy? Is that cheating because it decieves others as to the challenges of Noble?

I don't know.

[DrSpike]

I am of the school where people can do what they want in SP, as long as there is no comparative element.

Personally I'd usually fight if things went bad early on, but not always. Horses for courses really.

Admittedly people who post awesome!!! strategies that rely on something uncontrollable irk me.

[Dactyl]

My motivation in posting this thread was my frustration at different strategies suggested. I would go and try some of them and find that my results weren't as anywhere near as effective as those of the posters. So then I had to ask myself if I was doing something wrong, or was it the suggested strategy that was at fault? I suppose the ultimate means of evaluating strategies is by doing the sorts of things that they're doing in Apolyton University, where you can see logs of games, and different approaches for playing different games. I will check them out though I hope they will give examples of the game as shipped, rather than modding it first.

[Unspeakable Horror]

Originally posted by cal_01


I once had Bears camping right next to my capital in the beginning. He promptly ate all my scouts and warriors.

Anyhow, the moral of the story was that I didn't quit even when both my first scout and warrior got eaten. I still pushed forward!

(I promptly quit after the 3rd scout got eaten though. :P)

Do animals get into your territory?

I had a bear that was trapped between my borders and the sea, the poor thing wandered in the 3 tiles it had of neutral territory for a few years and eventually died

[Jawa Jocky]

Re: Gamesmanship and Strategy

Originally posted by Dactyl
This is an extremely risky strategy because there is a chance that you won't get the Pyramids even after having wasted a lot of turns building them, not to mention wasting the forests that you have chopped. You are really holding the bag, if that happens, but I've seen no discussion of a fallback strategy in that case and again I suspect that people just give up on the game.

I was 3 turns from completion when the AI beat me to the Pyramids. You get a lot of gold when this happens. My fallback strategy was to use the gold reserves to over-expand.

The gold reserve allows decifict spending while maintaining a 100% science rate. So you end up with more cities and military than the AIs without hurting your techology standing. The trick is to get your city maintance costs down by the time your reserve runs out.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Dactyl
I would go and try some of them and find that my results weren't as anywhere near as effective as those of the posters. So then I had to ask myself if I was doing something wrong, or was it the suggested strategy that was at fault?

Don't get me wrong, but some people have more experience and insight into some strategies than other guys. That can of course be part of the reason.

The other thing, though, is that certain situations ask for certain strategies. A lot will depend on the map, for instance. You can not use all strategies on all maps, so simply assessing which map warrants which strategy is something that requires experience and insight. The first key to success is figuring out what might work in which situation. The second thing is figuring out what you're situation actually is.

DeepO

[Velociryx]

I use lots of high risk strategies. Usually, when they fail, they fail BIG TIME (ie - I've been running totally defenseless to speed build my second city, barbarian wanders by...poof.

That's game.

There's no recovering from that, as I just lost my only city before I had my defenses up.

Has happened twice.

I can't speak for anybody else and their proposed ideas, but for me (and specifically re: "settler first," failures generally only come in two flavors:

1) Something wicked finds you before you get your defenses up.

Result: End of game. Not because you're a bad sport, but because you've only got one city with no defense. Predictably, you lose, and start again. *Shrug* It happens (twice in over a hundred starts at varying degrees of difficulty, so I'd still call it a pretty "safe" notion, overall).

2) Something wicked finds your early settler/worker and eats it.

Result: A setback. Nothing about the strategy changes, really. You're either committed to it, or you aren't. Maybe you'll slow down and build an escort, or maybe you'll push all the harder to make up for the lost time, but whichever route you choose, the end result is (or should be) the same. Then again, I'm doggedly determined when I feel like I've got a winning idea/start on my hands.

-=Vel=-