Spaceship comparison game

[Swiss Pauli]

Popped out to watch the Grand National and ended up staying out.

So, Toku it is. I love Toku - rubbish as AI, awesome in human hands.

[Swiss Pauli]

Here we go:

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=76188_Toku_BC-4000.Civ4SavedGame

[Swiss Pauli]

Some notes:

With Toku CS is needed for Samurai (as well as Machinery), so a CS Sling is an attractive opening. You start with the prereqs for Pottery so fuel research with cottages. Pyramids and other wonders can be conquered.

You need Iron too, but if you get workable Copper you might take the Iron by force. No need to build too many cities - 2 or 3 should do and the rest will follow.

Early warpath: 1 - axes, 2 - axes & cats, 3 - samurai & cats. A 'lonely island' would change this strategy, of course! There was a thread on Toku, but it's now gone.

As for Epic speed, the Oracle gets built between 900-800 BC. Great Library, well, I tend to build it around 400 AD at the latest and I've not been beaten to it yet. Pyramids are random and I've seen the Colossus go in as late as 900 AD!

Comparing Epic to Normal, then research is relatively slower than building, so units have a longer active life.

[fed1943]

A gone thread? I don't think so. Just increase the "last x days" below at right.
Best regards,

[rjmatsleepers]

I've downloaded the start and begun playing. Since this is intended as an exploration of different strategies (and since I have no experience playing with Tok), I've tried a few different approaches and I'll pick the best at AD 1 to take forward. I shall be trying to find an effective CS slingshot.

Possible spoiler

It is possible to get an ealy religion, but I'm not sure it's worth it

That's not very well hidden - can someone remind me what colour to use to hide the text!

RJM at Sleeper's

[zabrak]

Here are my thoughts so far (turn 140). These are obviously SPOILERS.

I don't think getting an early religion, the Pyramids, or the Oracle are possible (I'd love to read the log of anyone pulling one of these off; I'm sure I could learn a lot). In my game, Louis grabbed Hinduism on turn 23 and someone on the other continent got Buddhism (probably Germany) on turn 24 while I was still researching my second tech, and I had commerce more or less maxed throughout. I'm pretty sure this means they popped a series of fortunate huts. Now, if the way the Civ3 RNG worked still holds, it's possible that my hut pops and animal battles could change this. But nonetheless, Louis went on a tear and grabbed Judaism and the Pyramids, while Germany off on the other continent completed the Oracle on turn 99. Fortunately, I was playing fairly conservatively, and the nice Iron location set me up for my alternate strategy. I declared war on Louis on turn 137 with 12 Swordsmen with 4 XP each, and plenty of 4 XP Archers for backup. Tomorrow will see how I do, but I'm optimistic. Assuming Germany has a non-trivially smaller continent and/or the sixth civ can keep it in check, the rest of the game should be a Samurai-cats wipeout on my continent and a familiar tech race with Organized and numerical city supremacy keeping the Shogunate comfortably ahead.

[Swiss Pauli]

Things don't always go according to plan...

My warriors' wanderings yielded Sailing and Bronzeworking, a scout and some gold. The terrain they uncovered was good for two additional coastal cities for me, but a big stretch of jungle to the north.

Beyond the jungle, however, was some sweet terrain. Damn those French and Romans: gold mines, FPs, and some copper. An unfortunate encounter with a lion ended my mapping of this area.

With the hut luck, I reckon I can make the Oracle by my 900 BC 'deadline'. A chopped Library and two scientists give me completion by 920 and the barbs haven't troubled me overly.

Disaster! AI completes the Oracle in 980 AD. I console myself with founding Confucism three turns later. Decide to build the Great Lighthouse as I'll be taking some coastal cities...get some axes together and ponder an attack on the barb town nearby.

Disaster! AI completes GL 3 turns before me. I now have a big pile of cash. More axes. Hayuna has settled close: he's picked up my religion but I'm gonna have to come out fighting and he's a sitting duck. I head for Construction as I'm too weak for an axeman-only assault.

Rome took the barb town and has plopped down a city that will get its borders oppressed by Kyoto. His Praets are too tough to take on, however.

The early game didn't pan out too well. Later scouting showed Rome had marble in a good location. If I hadn't lost to the lion (77% win chance) then I might well have seen this fact. Then I would have abandoned the CS Sling and chopped in the Oracle earlier for Metalworking. Losing the GL was poor play as I delayed the final chop. I chopped Chichen Itza for the Great Prophet points but maybe aqueduct => Hanging Gardens would have been better.

[uberfish]

Up to 1200 AD now, and I'm taking a more detailed log this time but the game is clearly a win (spoiler)

I had bad luck losing several warriors and scouts early. I had to play it safe and research BW, pottery and AH, putting the CS slingshot firmly out of my reach. Instead, I got CoL from the Oracle and used a prophet on CS. Being next to one of the most irritating leaders (Louis) I then proceeded to run him over with Samurai. I think Tokugawa/Epic/Monarch was a silly choice for a space race because the settings are much more suited to warmongering. I'm going to conquer the rest of the continent since they aren't trading with me anyway. Domination would easily be within my reach, but I'll play it out to space I guess and see how the date compares with peaceful approaches.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by zabrak
Here are my thoughts so far (turn 140). These are obviously SPOILERS. Unfortunately, I can't match the background color, so I'll use the closest I can as well as the small font size.

I don't think getting an early religion, the Pyramids, or the Oracle are possible (I'd love to read the log of anyone pulling one of these off; I'm sure I could learn a lot). In my game, Louis grabbed Hinduism on turn 23 and someone on the other continent got Buddhism (probably Germany) on turn 24 while I was still researching my second tech, and I had commerce more or less maxed throughout. I'm pretty sure this means they popped a series of fortunate huts. Now, if the way the Civ3 RNG worked still holds, it's possible that my hut pops and animal battles could change this. But nonetheless, Louis went on a tear and grabbed Judaism and the Pyramids, while Germany off on the other continent completed the Oracle on turn 99. Fortunately, I was playing fairly conservatively, and the nice Iron location set me up for my alternate strategy. I declared war on Louis on turn 137 with 12 Swordsmen with 4 XP each, and plenty of 4 XP Archers for backup. Tomorrow will see how I do, but I'm optimistic. Assuming Germany has a non-trivially smaller continent and/or the sixth civ can keep it in check, the rest of the game should be a Samurai-cats wipeout on my continent and a familiar tech race with Organized and numerical city supremacy keeping the Shogunate comfortably ahead.

Early religion spoiler

It may have been pure luck, but I managed to found Hinduism. The research path was straight forward - mysticism, polytheism. To learn poly in time, I founded the first city in a location where I could work the fish tile from the begining.

CS slingshot spoiler

My approach to the slingshot was to learn CoL and then build the Oracle. I started with a workboat, followed by a settler. This enabled me to get the research benefit from the fish tile without losing production. My research path was mysticism, meditation, priesthood (I didn't found a religion). I founded my second city in a high production location and started the Oracle there straight away. My research continued as writing, CoL. There was a short interval before discovering writing where I built a warrior. My initial warrior defended the second city. I started to build a library as soon as I discovered writing and established two scientists as soon as I had built it. I got an academy fairly early, but I think this was after learning CoL. Confucianism was founded in my second city which expanded my fat cross and gave me enough shields to finish the Oracle

General comments

I'm finding that the map, settings and choice of leader seem to favour a war-monger approach. As uberfish has pointed out, presumably the best strategy here is to spend the early game establishing miltary dominance over your closest neighbours and switch to rapid research later.

RJM at Sleeper's

[KerThud]

I appreciate the white font for spoiler hiding. I've been able to avoid reading it. I'm pretty satisfied with where I'm at in the early ADs. I'm at a holding point, though.

I manually changed the color code to COLOR=white for the text below

Eventually I want to war with Louis, but Julius wants me to join him now, and I just don't know if I'm ready quite yet.

[zabrak]

I'll follow uberfish's example and post an update now that I'm at 1200 AD, and a full log when the game's done (SPOILERS):

My swordsman rush proved more successful than I'd expected. I took Paris & Lyons, holy cities for Hinduism and Judaism and home of the Pyramids, and razed most of the rest of France, while losing only a sacrificial axeman. I left Louis a city, got a few techs for peace, and pivoted over to HC. Same pattern - took two big cities, one with a wonder (Great Lighthouse), razed all but one and picked up some techs. Then I made perhaps my biggest tactical mistake, which was thinking that the one Praetorian guarding Julius' Iron meant he had tons and I needed to wait for cats. Of course, I was wrong (he had only that one), and worse, I had forgotten about the +50% to melee on Samurai/Macemen making cats less necessary. At any rate, the courthouses/FP were up, so I retained a few more when I finally got around to crushing Julius. I took a couple-turn breather, then wiped out Louis and pushed HC off the continent. Now HC and Julius are relegated to Madagascar, where I'll play tech bully for a while before I tire of them.

I was stunned to find Bismarck without religion, despite his early grab of both the Oracle and the Parthenon (I'm not sure how the RNG worked with that; Lord knows I'm no slouch when it comes to pulling off the sling). Despite converting him to Judaism, he's not qiute in the mood to trade with me yet; I've got some turtling to do, I suppose. I was pleased to find that Peter and Washington had both founded religions independently (Taoism and Buddhism, respectively) and ain't each other's biggest fans.

I've learned two important lessons so far (although they probably should be pretty obvious): first, missing out on early religion, the Oracle, and the Pyramids isn't a disaster if the AI can't resist a swords rush (in fact, that I had as many swords as I did can probably be attirbuted to the fact that, real early in Kyoto, I shut down pop growth and commerce in favor of production, which in turn was due to the low happiness cap that missing religion and Representation stuck me with). Second lesson is that a seemingly crummy map, the failure of typical opening strategies, and a playstyle in conflict with the victory goal don't mean you can't have fun. This has turned out to be pretty enjoyable for me, and I look forward to reading y'alls logs.

P.S. Hey RJM@S, what's the secret color for the background?

[KerThud]

Turn 140 is around 1AD on epic, right? Here's a SPOILER POST that indicates my approach to this point and strategy for beyond.


My first move was warrior to NE. I didn't want to settle on one of only two river grasslands, but I didn't want to lose the fish and the coast either. So, I moved the settler SE. Turned out to be okay since it put another herd of cows in reach. Unfortunately, it also meant fewer hills (only one now) and a couple useless desert squares. As I now see, it also moved my capital further from the center of my empire, so I'm not sure if it was a good move or not.

Starting warrior did some exploring and got sailing, a little gold, and a scout from huts. The warrior did pretty well and is still alive and well with Woodsman II. He's keeping an eye on French expansion now.

The scout did okay: survived one battle, popped a hut, and then died in a lion's jaws despite favorable odds in the forest.

On the way back from exploring and meeting everybody on the continent, the warrior found the only close copper *and* stone! Instant switch from the beeline to animal husbandry to masonry. Had 3 warriors busting fog and 3 workers laying down route to the new city with its copper and stone. All forests near Kyoto were chopped to get the Pyramids. Finished them right around 1000BC, IIRC.

The other major achievement right before AD was my many axemen eliminated the Incas. Razed one city, but kept the rest.

At 1AD, my economy is okay, but not great. I'm switching between 30% and 40% science. I kept three Inca cities including his capital. I got one city from the barbs that I decided to keep even though it was one tile east of where I really wanted it. I also founded a city to the east, but that might have been a mistake since it has yet to be very productive. I need to get Currency and Code of Laws before I do much more expansion, though I do need to get a city near that iron before the French or Romans do.

My grand strategy is to take over the entire island and then tech my way to the spaceship. I expect that with 4/7 on this island, the landmass won't be enough to trigger a domination victory. I hope to be well on my way to this before the other AIs arrive in caravels. Plan is to foster war between Romans and the French. They don't like each other, but don't mind me much. I'm hoping I can avoid too much more conflict before samurai and catapults.

The next tricky part will be staying solvent and out of major conflict before I'm ready to expand again.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by zabrak
P.S. Hey RJM@S, what's the secret color for the background?

The colour for the blue/grey(?) background is #d9d9d9

The white background appears to be #efefef, but this doesn't work properly.

General strategy spoiler, without any specifics


The various posts are in line with my observations. The most succesful strategy for this start seems to be early domination of the local land mass. What works well for me is securing land by pumping out settlers and researching the good early war techs - particularly iron working. Once the position is secure, there is plenty of time to build up the research output. I find this a bit disapointing. Perhaps Solo will come up with a way of using diplomacy to keep the AI in line.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Swiss Pauli]

Reached the mid 16th century:

After taking Inca's last city after a long siege it was time to push back the borders, spam some missionaries and get to Liberalism first. This was achieved by late 13th century and I took Nationalism because Cavalry were going to be more important than Galleons.

But where to go now? Rome must be mine because Louis has built every almost wonder going and is too strong. The plan is to convert Julius to Confucism, beeline to Military Tradition, switch to Theocracy, build lots of knights which I upgrade to (combat 2) Cavalry and take a 14 pop city (located between mine and Louis' core areas) in the first turn of war. The city of Ravenna directly borders Kyoto, so that will fall in the same turn to a cats/samurai combo as it only has two defenders.

Looking at the tech trade situation I reckoned I could get to Economics first because only Jules has Education and because he's settled heavily (4 cities) on the southern island, his research will be weak. The Great Merchant is soon mine and I switch to Theocracy and Free Market.

As the Knights gather at the border, Jules adds two more defenders to his city, but I surely have enough numbers. I trade Education to Louis for Divine Right and 270 gold to boost my war chest.

Military Tradition is reseached and my 10 theocracy fuelled Knights get upgraded. Start work on Chemistry as I plan to upgrade my best Samurai (level 4/5) to Grenadiers. Jules has Longbowmen, Maces and a couple of Knights.

War! Ravenna falls easily, and I take the big, ex-barb city, losing 1 cavalry and have one spare to start the attack group for Antium. A fly in the ointment is that war has cut off my island cities, so I trade Astronomy from Peter - at a premium, but needs must.

Jules more or less turtles, so he's finished. The conquest takes almost exactly 100 years to conclude. I leave the island colonies intact to drain his economy. I amble to take Rome so that I can get some Cav to the island. Setia, the world's most pointless city, gets razed and that's it for the Romans.

Peter manages to stick a cheeky city near Rome...maybe I shouldn't have traded him Military Tradition after all...

I'm 'dun conquerin' and will settle down for a buy-rush frenzy (I have a GE waiting to build the Kremlin). Might try for a defensive pact with Peter in case Washington sets his sights on my lands. Have switched to Free Religion to avoid religious problems and will switch to Rep as I beeline to Physics and my free scientist.

[solo]

I am keeping another detailed log, but will wait until the game is complete to post it. Meanwhile, my spoiler below will contain my progress so far until 1 AD, where I took a break:

Organized will be useful in this game, and perhaps the Agressive trait will come in handy to claim additional cities after founding the first 3 or 4 for with settlers.

I like the starting position, so founded Kyoto without moving. A workboat was the first thing to build, since I wanted to time the first worker with the discovery of Bronze Working. Meanwhile Kyoto can start growing. My warrior heads northwest and finds a nearby hut quickly, which produced Sailing! This is huge, since Sailing so early makes the Great Lighthouse much easier to get! The chance of Sailing from a hut is another benefit of starting the game with Fishing.

My warrior continues northwest and encounters another hut which produces a scout. Scouts are good explorers, but not so good at staying alive. I have experimented a lot with them and have found that they last longer if I make sure to end up their move on terrain providing a defensive bonus, preferably a hill with woods or jungle. I have also discovered that after their move is complete, I can click on them and am allowed to fortify them (same for warriors), before ending my turn. I don’t know if this little trick helps, but whenever I do this to my exploring units usually survive if attacked at the beginning of the next turn. You just have to remember to not leave them fortified the next turn, so that they can keep exploring. Also, with scouts, I’ve found that they last longer if the second move can be used to fortify them instead of continuing to another tile. It’s true that they slow down to warrior pace, but at least they stay alive a lot longer. I used to just hate ending their second move only to discover a barb or bear, so now I only use move #2 now if it will get my onto a hill with a forest or jungle, or away from trouble found with move #1.

My warrior headed back to the coast to see if there was a suitable site there for the next city and my scout started exploring to the west, where another hut was found quickly. It produced another tech, Pottery! So far, so good. Meanwhile my warrior found a nice site for city #2 with some Stone and Rice, along a bunch of forests to chop the Pyramids there quickly. A little further west, Capac was encountered, so peace was arranged and my warrior started heading back to watch over city site #2.

My scout encountered Louis and found another hut with 22 gold. Then Caesar was encountered, too. On the east coast another hut was found, but it yielded a useless map of ocean tiles. A final hut was found while heading home along the east coast, that produced a warrior. On the way to it, a good site was found for city #3, with access to Pig and Wheat, so my scout and new warrior foritified on nearby hills to keep barbs from spawning. By now the first worker was ready and Bronze Working revealed a source of Copper near the coastal site having Stone!

My plan was to build cities #2 and #3 quickly and have them build the Pyramids and Great Lighthouse, while using my capital to produce military units. I wanted the AI to do the work of improving the heavily jungled terrain in the interior, before going after their cities which were appearing there. After Bronze Working yielded a source of copper, I switched research to Writing, followed by Alphabet, making Literature the next research target afterwards, for the Great Library.

I used diplomacy to keep the 3 nearby AI happy and agreed to any and all demands, since I wanted to develop as much as possible before going on the offensive. This policy worked, since they started fighting each other instead of bothering me. Alphabet was discovered in 980 BC and the Pyramids were done in 960 BC, allowing uninterrupted city growth, after switching to Representation and Slavery.

Meanwhile, my capital had produced a galley which picked up my scout and went to explore the adjacent island to the southeast. The scout found two more huts, with 49 and 27 gold, but his luck ran out near the barb city in the center of the island, where he was killed by an archer.

However, finding this island change my plans. It’s much easier to claim vacant land with settlers than it is to wage a war with the AI and take their cities, so I decided to found two cities there and to attack and try to take the barb city in an attempt to claim the whole island for myself. Things were really looking up, since this island had a good variety of resources and terrain, just enough to fill out my intended quota of 6 cities.

My only frustration so far in this game was not being able to trade for Iron Working, which none of the AI wanted to part with. I kept delaying my decision to research this tech, hoping to arrange a trade, while researching toward Civil Service as the next target. I got to Code of Laws by 100 BC and at 1 AD was researching Civil Service. By 1 AD, my third city was about to complete the Great Lighthouse, too.