Test game: Lizzy of Aztecs

[Calanthian]

Shall we do a test game?

We each play 200 turns of this setup, keep a save every 10 turns and discuss why and what we did?

It is interesting to see what approach works best.
I think each of us should play as he normally plays..

So I propose we each play 200 turns, a save every 10 turns, then see how each of us did.
After that we can discuss the game ten turns at a time..

[Calanthian]

Turn 0: Game Start

[OzzyKP]

Cool idea! I'm game.

[OzzyKP]

Haha, definitely not my best work so far.

[DNK]

In! Keeping notes as I go.

[DNK]

T100 wrapup:

Another city soon to be founded near banana. GNP = #3 at 60. It would be higher but the Cap is going hammer crazy for LH-GLH. Goods at #1 at 34; Crops at #1 at 58 (3-way tie); Soldiers 95000; Land area #2; Pop #1 by a long shot. Only real concern here is keeping pace with Gilg's heavy unit production, but with Construction we should be fine, and with a solid pop base for mass whipping of cats and elephants. I wholly expect to get GLH in very short order. Though I hit a major economic "downturn" in the 70s, by now the economy is booming, and once GLH is finished and the Cap switches back to cottages, I can quick tech to IW and then Monarchy and the real fun begins once the happy caps come off.

Forgot to keep saves, but I have notes for a lot of the first 50T. I'll keep more saves for the next 100T.

Save pack (autosaves): http://apolyton.net/local_links/link...aming-435/5772

[DNK]

T151 wrapup

Well, Gilg's got iron and a city planted on top of it in the far north, so so much for keeping praets out of it. I have HBR now and the elephants are starting to come out. Attack is imminent. Working on Currency now. The initial attack will be Mediolanum - then to Rome. I will finish off the rest in time. GNP is #3 at 179/236; Goods #2 75/77; Crops #1 187/168; Soldiers #1 315/274; Land #6; Pop #1 5056/3087. Most cities are working cats/elephants, Ire is working a granary then Moai. GP farm is holding off to build units right now.
Forces are: 7 jags, 6 axes, 5 spears, 10 cats, 14 chariots, 11 workers - plan on a couple more cats and about 10 eles. will probably attack with all the eles cats, 4 spears, and all the jags plus 3-4 axes. A small stack is needed for Medio, but that big one's for the push to Rome.

Save here: http://apolyton.net/local_links/link...aming-435/5773

[mzprox]

I will give it a go. I played the first few turns, for this start the aztecs are probably bad choice. later with the altar it might be great, but I think they lose turns of early development, and that also could be crucial.
for this start too many techs are needed:
Agriculture
AH
Fishing
Mining->bronzeworking to chop/slave

That's too much with crappy starting techs.

[DNK]

Frustrating last 50T. There must be something in the map scripts that always give Mansa Musa a ridiculous amount of room to expand. Basically, my GNP has flatlined since starting the war, but he's just climbing away, merrily content to sit in his corner, wherever it is (he also must always start on the opposite side of the map from the player so there's no chance of stopping him, or even finding him).

Anyway, to sum it up: war is called off by the Apostolic Palace right as I'm about to commit stacks and Rome gets longbows, redeclare later and capture Cumae but fail at Mediolanum due to reinforcements - have to quit the war as he gets a stack at my relatively undefended Bananachussettes flank - during peace, Apostolic Palace gives back Cumae - war again, retake Cumae and take Mediolanum - Apostolic Palace stops war again. Mansa beats me to Notre Dame by 2T and I say "T192 is pretty much T200, and I have better things to do since our peace treaty won't be over until after T200 anyway."

Has anyone ever mentioned that the Apostolic Palace is broken as hell?

[OzzyKP]

Ugh, in my game I was completely directionless. Really no strategy to speak of. Just bumbling along. I learned a few things though:

I play better under pressure. With no humans in the game and no barbs it felt super easy early on so I didn't care about efficiency, so naturally I did a lot of stupid things. Also, I think Pitboss improves my gameplay. I have lots of time to tweak things consider different paths, plan things out. In SP I just wanted to get through the turns and didn't think things through much. Also, I started playing at midnight, finished after 2 am. Probably not my prime civ playing hours. And while it isn't an excuse for my poor play, I do agree with mzprox that there were so many directions I wanted to go. Often there is an obvious path, this time there were several. So I guess I just changed my mind every 4 turns, haha. But towards the end there my economy was chugging along, going with mz's specialist strategy (as inefficienct as I was) did well. Also I was really digging those sacrificial altars. NOT digging the starting techs or Jaguar.

But yea, this game was pretty embarrassing:


Don't judge me!

Turn 200 Save:

[OzzyKP]

Ok! I tried it again. This time I was much more aggressive. I took over most of the Roman empire (damn, they spread like a virus). As I was finishing them off I decided to invent feudalism so I could get them to capitulate. I didn't care about their northern cities and figured they'd be a nice buffer for me. It'd be perfect actually. But ONE turn before I got feudalism they became a vassal of Suleiman (the strongest civ). Ugh. So as I took their capitol for the third time I now had Ethiopian troops pouring across my border. *sigh* Either way I finished as #1 in GNP.

I built the Oracle and grabbed Code of Laws which was a good move early on. I got a religion and my altars. I later on, while I had the Romans on the ropes, I built the Parthenon and the Great Library. The Romans were busy building wonders too, they built (and I captured) the Great Wall, the Pyramids, and the Hanging Gardens. I didn't even realize they had those last two though. Probably 10 turns went by before I realized I could switch into Representation, haha.

I made extensive use of the lash and yea, I'm really digging the Sacrificial Altar. I still didn't have near the focus or attention to micro managing that I do when playing a game online, so I'm sure I could get far more use out of it in a real game (and someone else could do even more I'm sure), but it really came in handy. The unhappiness only lasts 5 turns, that's less then it takes to regrow the city (even without building farms everywhere). So I could slave 2-3 population pretty much anytime I wanted. The trick was remembering, haha. I get even more distracted while at war. So I'd be fighting my battles and start wishing I had more troops, then I'd think "oh yea! slavery!" and whip out 5 elephants or catapults that turn.

In any event, I did better then last time. I really do love this UB. My only complaint with the combination is that I still felt pulled in different directions. I want to go for food to support specialists and slavery, but then I also want to go for cottages for the financial trait. Then in my high food cities the specialists kept getting whipped. Of course I didn't specialize my cities (which I hear is a wise thing to do) and again, I didn't really micromanage that much. So I'm sure as a team we could figure out how to balance slavery, philosophical & financial. But if we can pull off that balance... I think they are each incredibly strong and useful.

[Calanthian]

Played until turn 100 so far.

Until turn 57 I had one single city (level 6). But I was ready for the big economic leap..
By turn 100 I have 6 cities, 2 wonders (oracle + stonehenge), 2 religions (used Oracle for Code of laws).
First in points: 323 vs 293..

Expectations are that I can continue to spam cities, as my altars are getting along nicely.. still at 80% science.

[DNK]

Ozzy, do you have a T50/100/150 save? I would find it hard to compare T200 turns simply because it looks like you guys didn't get AP-screwed repeatedly in your later games, whereas I had a huge uphill battle against that thing for the period.

Looking at Cal's save has me thinking one thing: we really should have done aggressive (or ruthless) AI

An interesting difference in approach: get the capital big then REX vs REX early and aggressively. Also interesting focus on workers and improvements: I had 26 tiles improved and 8 workers vs 16 tiles and 4 workers for you, yet somehow you were beating me hands down in tech, food, and production. And it wasn't the religion, as I had a settled GPriest, which was about the same GPT as Kong. I am guessing it's due to the fact that my economy cratered in the 70s due to over-REXing, plus the fact I actually built units to counter Gilg's power rating (which leads me back to my first point). That said, had I paid more attention I would have noticed he didn't have any strat resources and as such had no offensive units to field, and therefore building a bunch of chariots was totally unnecessary. I really messed up the strategic aspect there.

The difference in our tech rate is 100% due to me producing units, so that makes sense - take that out and we're at the same rate (well, you're 2BPT ahead of me). I definitely over-REX'd early such that I couldn't afford to get to pottery soon enough, which was quite an issue as it dragged out into a 15-20T research project. That said, a lot of the issue was unit costs - perhaps almost all of it. I'd like to see how our approaches line up when we treat the AI as being as aggressive as a human opponent.

[OzzyKP]

An interesting difference in approach: get the capital big then REX vs REX early and aggressively. Also interesting focus on workers and improvements: I had 26 tiles improved and 8 workers vs 16 tiles and 4 workers for you, yet somehow you were beating me hands down in tech, food, and production.

Heh, and you teased me for not building enough workers. Do you have 26 tiles worked? Or have you improved a lot of tiles that aren't being used?


Attached are turns 50, 100, and 150:

[OzzyKP]

Do you have a turn 100 save, DNK?