Your SID level experiences

[Drachen]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Drachen: As I said any settings are fine IMO as long as they are declared. I take the point about providing opinions as guidelines. Hence, I'll suggest IMO turning off victory conditions is questionable, as is picking too few civs. Turning flipping off is probably a little too artful, but having lost a core city not far from my capital to a flip in a Deity game I would understand it.

The trouble is that with all victory conditions enabled I can’t see how a person could win. That may be the point though as default setting SID may be so difficult that it’ll take some time to figure out how to beat it if it hasn’t been done yet and I don’t know if it has been cracked since I haven’t seen anything about the game settings of the few SID wins I’ve heard about. So, I’m not sure about the victory conditions yet. That said I’ll take a shot at some of the setup screen 2 settings. Play any tribe you want and pick any rivals you want. On standard maps and larger I don’t have a problem with adding or subtracting one opponent. I looked at a number of maps generated by the editor and with one less opponent on a standard map you’ve got roughly a 1/3 chance of getting your own archipelago island and that opens up a GL build gambit. It just seems likely that not having a bit of space to expand into without rivals will mean that all games will have to be based on early warfare and while Vmxa1 has shown that that tactic can be very successful, nonetheless, I wouldn’t vote to have that be the only gambit available to us. I haven’t looked at editor maps using large and huge maps and so I don’t know how adding or subtracting rivals affects available gambits.

[Drachen]

Thanks for the quick response Jimmytrick. I think I'll have a crack at this tech stealing business.

[Drachen]

Originally posted by vmxa1
My interest is to hear what people feel is not kosher in the settings.

For the record I suspect that you cannot win with culture turned on at Sid in a std map regardless of the rest. Well if at least 5 civs are in the game.

BTW I just got handed my noticed. Yup culture defeat, dam. I think I had finally got to a point where I had a shot.

That’s a shame Vmxa1. Great game though! I think that theoretically there may be a way to win with both Diplomatic and Cultural victory conditions on. If the late game has 3 tribes left then both AI’s are likely to be well ahead of you and so one of them would need to have your vote for a Diplomatic win. Also, IIRC the tribe getting to the required cultural level overall must have double the culture of it’s nearest rival as well. If that’s true then the runner up AI might have enough culture to prevent #1 from winning. That still leaves the 20,000 for one city problem so can you tell how much culture the Celts best city had?

[asleepathewheel]

That does suck.

Maybe some proactive diplomacy would help. When I see a civ about to get steamrolled, I will sometimes gift techs and resources to bring them closer to parity. (unless of course Ihave designs on their territory in the near future) It rarely works, but it can slow down the KAI somewhat. If only you could gift units The problem on sid is if you are behind the whipee in techs and can't help them out that way.

[DrSpike]

Hard luck Vmxa.........nice to stay in so long though.

[Drachen]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
What I find to be dubious:

selection of specific AI civs (ie no scientific, no expansionist, no seafaring would make the game much easier)

I'm not sure but I don't think that accellerated production would cook it.

There was a bit of discussion about Accelerated Production (AP) about halfway through this thread that you might want to have a look at. AP probably benefits the human player significantly and for me that’s a bit too much cooking.

As to the selection of opponents I think that’s open to a bit more discussion. You feel that certain traits are so strong that they must be included unless randomizing, but isn’t it a bit more map dependant? Do you feel, for instance, that playing against Japan, Aztecs, and Rome on a tiny Pangaea map wouldn’t be fair to the AI because they weren’t Seafaring or Expansionist?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Drachen
As to the selection of opponents I think that’s open to a bit more discussion. You feel that certain traits are so strong that they must be included unless randomizing, but isn’t it a bit more map dependant? Do you feel, for instance, that playing against Japan, Aztecs, and Rome on a tiny Pangaea map wouldn’t be fair to the AI because they weren’t Seafaring or Expansionist?

I feel that intentionally excluding certain traits is cooking. Such as selecting civs other than scientific, so there are no free era techs. Such as selecting a large pangea and excluding expansionist civs (and you being an exp civ). And yes this is map dependent in some cases. I wouldn't feel like I was cheating if I chose non exp on an 80% archipelago. I would if it were a pangea. I personally find seafaring to be great on any map, so if I excluded it intentionally it would lessen the victory for me.

Also I feel choosing civs based on their UU can be cooking, such as I don't want to deal with ancient defensive UUs. etc

In both of these situations, the reverse is also true, you can choose civs that would make the game much harder on you. I imagine a game with all ancient UUs would be more difficult than a game where you would see the americans and russians etc where their units on't come into play until much later in the game.

[Drachen]

Originally posted by jimmytrick


I posted a little on my Sumerian game at Civfanatics.

.

ltcoljt I presume?

[Capt Dizle]

Yeah. Lt. Col. jimmytrick

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Drachen


That’s a shame Vmxa1. Great game though! I think that theoretically there may be a way to win with both Diplomatic and Cultural victory conditions on. If the late game has 3 tribes left then both AI’s are likely to be well ahead of you and so one of them would need to have your vote for a Diplomatic win. Also, IIRC the tribe getting to the required cultural level overall must have double the culture of it’s nearest rival as well. If that’s true then the runner up AI might have enough culture to prevent #1 from winning. That still leaves the 20,000 for one city problem so can you tell how much culture the Celts best city had?

Those strategies would not work for as I was solidly in second place with twice the score of the next civ.
In the begining, I felt the Inca would hold them and then maybe the Arabs, but they all got rolled.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
That does suck.

Maybe some proactive diplomacy would help. When I see a civ about to get steamrolled, I will sometimes gift techs and resources to bring them closer to parity. (unless of course Ihave designs on their territory in the near future) It rarely works, but it can slow down the KAI somewhat. If only you could gift units The problem on sid is if you are behind the whipee in techs and can't help them out that way.

That is exacly my problem. I could not help the Incas or the Arabs as they always had more tech than I had, right down to the day they disappeared.

They of course wouldnot do much of anything with me, even when I tried to help them. I mean I tried to give them back their cities and they would not do it, not even for me given them the city and additional stuff.

I could not make any alliances with them, nothing. Probably because I keep breaking my peace deals with the Koreans.
Oh and maybe a few razed cities here and there.

[Capt Dizle]

I think stealing techs is going to have to be part of Sid strategy but wars sometimes get in the way.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel



I feel that intentionally excluding certain traits is cooking. Such as selecting civs other than scientific, so there are no free era techs. Such as selecting a large pangea and excluding expansionist civs (and you being an exp civ). And yes this is map dependent in some cases. I wouldn't feel like I was cheating if I chose non exp on an 80% archipelago. I would if it were a pangea. I personally find seafaring to be great on any map, so if I excluded it intentionally it would lessen the victory for me.

Also I feel choosing civs based on their UU can be cooking, such as I don't want to deal with ancient defensive UUs. etc

In both of these situations, the reverse is also true, you can choose civs that would make the game much harder on you. I imagine a game with all ancient UUs would be more difficult than a game where you would see the americans and russians etc where their units on't come into play until much later in the game.

I tend to agree that using a pangea and then going expansionist and not allowing any other ones is too much. Not sure it would work, but it would seem to be an advantage.

I took 70% and not seafaring to ensure I was not being unfair.
I am not sure about the ancient UU's though. It could go either way. They would blow their GA very soon and the UU would not be the reason I died as they could do that without one.

One thing that happen in my game that may have hurt me is that I only had one civ on my land and the land was large. This let the AI get a massive jump on me and made contacts take longer for me.

It also make it less likely that I could capture any ancient wonder cities until it was too late to help.

The flipside is that maybe I would have been in even greater trouble sooner, I don't know.

The sad part is the Celts had finally traded me a lux for just a lux and 4 or 5 gpt.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
I think stealing techs is going to have to be part of Sid strategy but wars sometimes get in the way.

You are correct about the stealing, but it takes cash. The war does hurt production, not sure if that can be avoided though.

I am rethinking the plan to go to Monarchy as well. That form looked good to me as it has no WW and a bit better support if oyu have lots of cities.

The draw back is you can't afford to remove the MP's. I think now I should have gone to republic and either paid to support or trimmed back on the troops. Maybe just used them and replace them at a slower pace.

The WW was a red herring as I was not at war much at all after I dropped the Koreans. I got scared when the world was after me most of the ancient age and did not want to make peace.

After the Celt and the Arabs took a hit they made peace. By the time Korea was gone, I was strong enough that only the celts were a threat.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Hard luck Vmxa.........nice to stay in so long though.

Thanks, I think it was just that I wanted to see once and for all what it was about. It was interesting, but not fun.

It will be harder to hang in the next time, unless I can learn some better techniques.

I don't know if the heavy hitters are still struggling with it or aren't ready to shed some light on it for us peons.

Anyway thanks to all for the feedback. I bet Paddy is no longer wanting to see this in the story section.