Pointers on Isabella? (Help!)

[cynyck]

This is the first time I've played Isabella and its an interesting game. I am learning quite a bit. However, I think I played it wrong. Its a fractal map, normal speed, standard size on Noble. I even dropped down a level because I was concerned about trying a new strategy.

I took all seven religions and actually built all seven shrines. I am swimming in cash, but perhaps I should have settled a few more of the GPs.

Its late in the game and I am first in production, but fifth in GNP. I have stayed current by researching outside the usual lines the AI goes for and trading with the bottom half, but Mansa and Huayna got rocketry before me. Also, while I have all of the other resources with extras, I do not have aluminum. Finally, although I really do not know how to tell other than to "eyeball it," I cannot be sure I will have a city close enough to the equator to build the space elevator (and even if I can, without a GE it will be a longshot since I will not likely get the tech first).

I attached the save file below if anyone wants to peak at it and offer some suggestions. Huayna is in the lead and although quite a few peeps are pleased with me, everyone is pleased with him so the UN does not look promising. I have concentrated on staying friendly with folks so my army is not powerful enough to punch a hole in both Mansa and Huayana. Liz is the only AI on the same continent as Huayana and she will not consider attacking him. It is too late to go for a culture victory.

Right now I am headed for fusion to grab the GE and then planning on going for the space elevator tech, but that seems a long way around and may not be much of a help even if I get it. Maybe I have enough production to launch on sheer build speed.

I am determined to play this out because there is a lesson in here somewhere.

Thanks in advance for any pointers, and feel free to tell me where I went wrong.

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=78075_Isabella-2AD-1948.Civ4SavedGame

[Blake]

Usually it's not a good idea to found all the religions.

Optimally you let the AI's found some, this serves two purposes:
1) It allows power blocks to form, and thus the AI's fight each other.
2) They'll do all the hard work for you, spreading the religion, generating the prophet, building the shrine. Then take the holy city and profit.

[CerberusIV]

Well, I played the game through and got a fairly easy space victory in 2016.

Militarily I disbanded the warriors and scout and concentrated on upgrading everything else to infantry and SAM infantry. Later I added tanks and an air force and ugraded the cavalry to gunships.

Research needs to be focused on military essentials first, then the spaceship techs. I abandoned Satellites and went for Combustion, Medicine and Flight first. Then Plastics, Fibre Optics and Fusion. After that Robotics, Satellites, Genetics and Ecology in that order.

All cities should have a factory, coal plant, laboratory and airport. I missed Eiffel Tower but picked up Internet in Cardosa (which gave me 3 or 4 techs including Satellites and Robotics) and managed the Space Elevator in Seville (with the Great Engineer from Fusion). A Great Scientist also gave me an academy in Madrid.

I changed to the Environmentalism civic once I had Medicine. This has no gold cost as the game is run at 100% science although it will reduce commerce and thus science slightly but does virtually remove any happiness and health problems.

Cities not building anything else should produce useful missionaries to spread your religions in your own cities for gold and culture. I did get another Prophet so built the last (Buddhist) shrine. Delphi and the two cities near Awdaghost should get cultural improvements. Delphi is under cultural pressure from the Greeks and needs help. Awdaghost is vulnerable. I managed to provoke riots there but there probably isn't enough time to flip the city.

In the end it was comfortable partly due to the Internet. Only Elizabeth managed all the techs and my superior production cranked out the parts well before any AI could.

Here is the finished game for comparison.

[CerberusIV]

Now that I've had a bit of time to reflect on the game I played this morning here are my strategic thoughts.

A cultural victory might have been possible in this game. It requires 9 cities (to give enough temples per religion to build a cathedral building in each of your 3 cultural cities). There is room to build another city south of Madrid and east of Delphi on the coast. It would have had 6 land tiles to work, enough to get some temples up. Four or five religions per city is feasible, the failure rate for missionaries beyond that is quite high. Making Seville one of the cultural cities and building cathedrals there earlier in the game might have been enough to flip Awdaghost. That would have made 9 cities. However a cultural win would have required adopting an appropriate strategy at least 50 turns earlier.

A domination win would have been possible but would have had to start much earlier, clearing your continent with grenadiers at the latest, then going on to invade Cyrus, Mansa and Napoleon in the modern era.

The research path for a spaceship is quite critical. The path I outlined above works well. Satellites is not a priority tech. It is enough to pick it up after Fusion and Robotics and still have time to build the thrusters before your high hammer cities finish the other parts. Madrid and Cordosa are the cities to build the five individual parts whilst the casings and thrusters can be built elsewhere.

The Internet was a bonus for me and I only realised how important it was at the end. Madrid was busy building the SS cockpit and Cordosa had nothing much to do. I realised I could build the Internet in Cordosa in 13 turns leaving Madrid to build the SS engine whilst Cordosa would finish the Internet in time to build the SS docking bay. So there was nothing to lose by going for it. It saved 4 turns on researching Robotics and probably 6 on Satellites - at least 9 or 10 turns off the final finishing time.

The AI invariably researches Composites which can be ignored if going for the spaceship, especially if you don't have aluminium to build the units it allows!

Although I got the Space Elevator it really wasn't crucial. I was within a couple of turns of finishing all the SS components except SS life support when it completed and life support only took 6 turns. Maybe the Elevator saved a couple of turns here.

Militarily, with nothing to gain by going to war as there is no aluminium within easy reach, it is enough to keep the military numbers up high enough to deter the AI's. Combustion is needed for the more powerful units as Spain, fortunately, has oil. Upgrading is the way to go since under Representation and with science at 100% there is nothing else to spend the gold on.

I've never really wanted to try getting all the religions so it was interesting to see how it can work out. It would be quite a bit harder on Prince.

[cynyck]

Thanks Blake and Cerberus. Good points all the way around.

I played it out also Cerberus, and I launched in 2019 but it was close because I stayed on the same track. There was no problem with production in those cities which was what pulled my a_ _ out of the hopper, but not keeping my military on the cutting edge came back to haunt me.

From the beginning of the game I tried to keep Alex happy because I know what a bear he can be if he is your neighbor and is less than "pleased." Mansa and Huayna were both nipping at my heels in the race to space, and one of them paid Alex to come after me at the end. Delphi flipped to me from Alex early on, and when he DOWed me he went straight for it.

I sent most of my military to the capital, which was next in line after Delphi and with the bags of cash I was generating I upgraded everything. Unfortunately, I could not build choppers because I had ignored the tech in my race to space, but Cyrus was happy to trade with me and I upgraded all my cavalry. Along with the tons of mech inf, I ran an organized retreat allowing Alex to take Delphi after plundering the countryside a bit. This gave me the half dozen or so turns I neeeded to launch and wave back at Mansa and Huayana as the earth descended into Global Thermonuclear (thats nuke-lee-er, not nuk-u-ler) War resulting in the extinction of the human race, except for me and my rag-tag companions hurtling through space toward Alpha Centauri.

And yes, I agree, this would have been much more difficult on Prince. But, this is a strategy I am not familiar with, so I decided to drop down a level to try it.

[Ijuin]

Originally posted by Blake
Usually it's not a good idea to found all the religions.

Optimally you let the AI's found some, this serves two purposes:
1) It allows power blocks to form, and thus the AI's fight each other.
2) They'll do all the hard work for you, spreading the religion, generating the prophet, building the shrine. Then take the holy city and profit.

There is something to be said for a One World Religion, though. By spreading a single religion to the entire world, you get the diplomatic bonus from "brothers and sisters of the faith" from ALL other nations, which is very helpful if you are going for a diplomatic victory.

[Quillan]

Is it? Think about this: they also get the "brothers and sisters of the faith" bonus with each other, too. End result is you don't count that bonus at all. Basically what seems to work diplomatically is for you to be hated by the number 2 population civ and loved by number 3, 4 and maybe 5. That way you should get enough votes (or close) to win. If everyone is at +5 to everyone else due to all sharing religion, it evens out. The other factors determine who is liked and hated, and those aren't really controllable.

Even then, you cannot control the passive spread of religion. If you have them all, Judaism may spread randomly to some, Hinduism to others and Buddhism to still others that are trading with you in the early going. The moment Astronomy is discovered and someone can trade across the ocean, everything starts spreading. Whatever they get first they'll adopt, and whatever they adopt they tend to spread actively.