Your SID level experiences

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Vince278
Am I given to understand that NOBODY has won a game yet at Sid level?

Somebody (Master Zen?) told me that there was a single Sid win during the beta.

I'm pretty sure that there are a number of us that could do it (Is there a Dr. Aeson in the house? ), but nobody has subjected themselves to the slog of it yet, as there are too many other fun things with which to play around.

Might be a fun DG project.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Vince278
Am I given to understand that NOBODY has won a game yet at Sid level?

check out the "beyond sid" thread and civfanatics. bamspeedy, one of the crazy guys actually won a level with the AI having 10 times cheapter buildings and units (at sid: only 2.5 times cheaper) than the human player. also, every AI had 4 settlers at the beginning and free unit support for several dozen units!

of course that game was using one main legal exploit: suicide curraghs/galleys. and it was a isolated start.
read the thread, 163 MGLs were produced!!!!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=66169

edit: and i remember reading a beta testers report that sid had been beaten. however, i don't know if that's just of archipelagio or also pangea/continents

[DrSpike]

Resources will be found..........I'm waiting for the FP rigmarole to sort itself out then I'll try it properly. On cooked settings I doubt its even that hard, but without them it's quite scary.

[Enriquillo]

Hehe I don't think it's worth going republic until you have conquered enough cities to be a force in the game. And if you haven't done that already you may as well give up I'm afraid.

Conquering cities!? Are you mad??!!

The window of oppurtunity for your ancient age units is very, very small. Before you know it you're fighting muskets and even riflemen.
I guess with a good UU, like Immortals, Mounted or Gaelic warriors, you might stand a better chance, but still....

I agree that Republic wasn't a great choice, but not for the reason you gave, it wasn't smart because I had no luxuries and no means of trading for them either. Also, I didn't have monarchy researched yet.
Just 2 luxuries would have allowed me to move the luxury slider from 30% to 20% or even 10%, thus giving me some money to work with.

There was no way to be a force on this map, it was just not possible. I had a good rex and managed to build 16 good cities before running out of space.

Now cooking settings might change all this, but that would be cheating... oh wait, that's exactly what the AI does on SID level.
Imagine being expansionist and finding 4 free techs, that would equal 200 turns of researching on SID

[DrSpike]

Well 16 cities is fine..........republic should be prioritised in that case over masses of ancient age units, and resources used to prepare the transition. No luxuries is a mean blow if you have enough territory for 16 cities........that must have annoyed you a touch.

Maybe in Republic you could have used the lower research costs for last place to catch up enough to kick some ass late game. Maybe not, but with that much room (16 cities on Sid is not common.........the most I got without extreme packing was 6 or so) that'd be my first choice if no one was around for you to kick in the admittedly small window early on.

I wish I'd got 16 cities without conquering in my Sid games.

[Enriquillo]

Only 6 cities? Weird, as I was playing standard settings, continents, and could easily have build even 20 cities had I grabbed the land to the north of me, which was all ice btw.

[DrSpike]

Well it depends on the start..........did you say standard settings? If so 16 cities on Sid is not that common. But you have resources either way. If they start closer you have a chance at exploiting the smallish window with a bunch of upgrades. If you have a load of land anyway, like you did, I would use high research early on and keep things moving, try to go republic when feasible, and not use resources for upgrades and a big army, because as you say, the window is small and you will probably miss it. No luxuries is nasty, but not insurmountable.

Of course there is a chance you can never catch up once you fall behind, but that looks to be a decent start........foment some wars mid game, use human judgement to offset the mass of units they have lategame and through selective wars hopefully catch up enough in tech to win. Hopefully.

[Enriquillo]

Yep, standard settings, barbs on roaming and everything else default. I had culture victory and everything on, which is why I decided not to continue that game.
A luxury or two would have really helped in this case, but it's pretty common to either get good land and no luxuries or crappy land and 2 luxuries. Either way is not great if you ask me.

Trying to start a feasible game now, with England or some other seafaring nation.
No barbarians, minus two AI's. No luck so far, I've bumped into Germans in one game, they declared war early on after I beat them to a good city site and they levelled that town. Can you say restart

[DrSpike]

That's not just Sid though........my only Monarch level game with C3C was a humbling defeat before 3000BC when Bismarck turned up with a spear and an archer and beelined for my capital. I was unamused.

[Inverse Icarus]

those incan stacks give me joy.

[Enriquillo]

Oh joy Building 3 cities before running out of space is so much fun...

[mrmitchell]

[Enriquillo]

OK, this SID thing gives the weirdest maps.
The one I'm playing now is probably the best chance I'll ever get of beating SID. I started about a dozen others before this one , I didn't get past 3 or 4 cities once.
Now I'm playing as the English on a large archi map, with 5 opponents.
I have 17 cities and room for about 5 more.
One turn away from the Great Library and mapmaking, I even gave the Japanese the finger when they demanded writing from me.
The poor sobs didn't even know how to sail across the ocean yet, so I figured I could afford a war with 'em

Now if I just have the patience to play this out... I'm actually starting to believe I might stand a chance this time. Poor naive me

Just watch me not get any saltpeter and iron! To be continued...

[Enriquillo]

Here's the save for 4000BC, try it out, it's a good one.

I won't give you any hints, you can probably tell enough from the screenshot.

Rules:
level: SID
map: large archi (smallest islands available)
barbs: non existent
AI's: five, nonseafaring, but one random.

Great island to start with, enough luxuries and lots of river and cows, can't ask for anything more.

[vmxa1]

Five civs on a large map? I think you need to have at least 8 to make it reasonable. It makes things distorted too much with so few civs in that much land/water.