Sid games C3C: how to improve our skills

[Mountain Sage]

1500AD: another great leap another age. 5531 gold +46/turn, Industrialization in 14 turns. Celts – Economics, Physics, Metallurgy, + Music Theory (!), Arabia - Banking and Chemistry, China - Banking, Astronomy, Metallurgy.
Magellan’s , Newton, Smith, Copernicus’s (and Knights Templar and the Statue of Zeus, of course) in the pocket.
The total score…. Almost there…
The rest of the game is routine...

[Mountain Sage]

1814AD: got ToE, Hoover Dam and Universal Suffrage. Replaceable Parts in 11 turns. Celts – Steam Power and Medicine, China and Arabia still in the Middle Ages.
the game ended in 1984, but nothing importante happened until then...

My economics:

[Mountain Sage]

The overall score...

[Mountain Sage]

The greatest joke of the game... that adviser will be in deep trouble...

If you need any more info, just et me know and I will give you still more details...

[Mountain Sage]

The greatest joke of the game... that adviser will be in deep trouble...

If you need any more info, just et me know and I will give you still more details...

[Drachen]

Thanks for the report MS. All in all a great looking game. Some tests I've conducted make me feel that even with a large army I could have kept up with or surpassed the AI if I had been in a more productive government. Communist with SPHQ was by far the best with Democracy a two turn longer research time runner up.

[Mr Justice]

just making my first attempt at SID atm.

i'll post up some images tonight.

anyway im playing Large archipeloe. i picked the reliable ould dutch. i followed sages advice and i choose my opponents and reduced it by 2.
my opponents are egypt, america, hittites, russia, mongols, arabs, babylon, celts and one other.

i was gunna play using sages save but i just wasnt comfortable playing with spain. the religious trait imo is a waste at this level cause i intend on 1 goverment change from depotism to republic. plus swiss mercs are just to good to resist.

i selected my map very carefully. my home island had 3 different luxuries and plenty space. thankfully the less number of opponents worked becuase comparing my island to others its clear that its sized so that 2 civs should be starting in it.

however i've brrn unlucky with the resources, no horses or iron on my island. but i was extreamly lucky. i managed to get a settler onto an uninhabitated island half way cross the world. the city has both Iron and horses in its radius. it was an ocean crossing of 7 turns with an 1 tile island on the way. i was unbelieveably lucky with the first 2 galleys (1st one to scout it, 2nd deliever settler.) cause susequentally i never managaed to get any more galleys to make it (i tried about 6 more attempts). as a result i now share this island with 2 citys from the biggest AI.

its only now (circa 600 AD) that ive gotten navigation so its only now that i can use iron and horses in my home island. up to that i had military force of around 5 spearmen and a trechubet. am going to start to build an invasion force to take out my backward neighbour, Arabia.

ive struggled to keep somewhat in touch with the AI as reagrding reasearch. im atleast half an age behind them.
their is 3 AIS who are ahead of me (in every way id imagine) and the rest are all behind me technologically. its only from tech treading and tech stealing that im getting advances. ive 0% reasearch and 1 scientist.
but due to my nonexistant military and not building librarys/unis im getting circa 350 gpt from taxation (90%)
this allows me to steal fairly regularly.

the three top AIS are all embroiled in a bitter war. im hoping that their militarys will grow too big for their economys to handle (which has happend most of the other civs). iv no idea how i'll actually win, diplomatic and cultral are turned off. so its either domination or space race. im slightly optomistic.

i'll post the images when i get home.

for all those peeps who read this and think wow. i was a monarchy only player untill a number of months ago. once a civ player is willing to forgo previous assumptions about how to play the game anything is posisble. (eg no military force is unnerving, any kind of attack and its time machine time, where buy i'll go back 30/40 turns and adjust my strategy), (im calling this Precognition, tis a nicer term ).

[vmxa1]

Good thing you turned off culture with the Babylon in the game.

I like to go to monarchy so I can have a large army. It lets me take out at least 1 or 2 civs. This gives me enough land to stave off any run away KAI from getting a domination win.

It also allows me to stop a culture win. I feel having it on is important to a sid run as that is the easiest way to lose.

[Mr Justice]

ok got the images and a couple of saves.

but i put the images on myown webspace caused i couldnt be arsed resizing them and i hate the way these images take up so much space on the thread.

my island

http://www.icc-comp.net/images/general/civ/hereshome.jpg

my resource island ive enlarged the minimap with this image. remember i got to here going west.

http://www.icc-comp.net/images/general/civ/ResourceIsland.JPG

heres my sicence dude telling me im great when i know im not

http://www.icc-comp.net/images/general/civ/MrScienceman.JPG

now some victory screens

http://www.icc-comp.net/images/general/civ/Victorystat.JPG

http://www.icc-comp.net/images/general/civ/scoreGraph.JPG

http://www.icc-comp.net/images/general/civ/PowerGraph.JPG

the demographics

http://www.icc-comp.net/images/general/civ/Demographics.JPG

heres 2 saves, beginning

http://www.icc-comp.net/images/general/civ/4000bc_Dutch_Sid.SAV

and current

http://www.icc-comp.net/images/general/Civ/Current.SAV

also a couple of corrections.
i dont have cultural victory turned off. personally im burying my head in the sand as regards this. im hoping that the 3 biggest civs will not eliminate eachother so they will prevent a cultral win for meh. (atm civ no1 is warring with 2+3)

also barbarians are set to none.

im in republic atm, will prob stay there cause gold is the only thing keeping me in the game atm.
if i dont win this time im definately going to try the map again. all the Civs to my west are BIG, but to the East is CIVS which just didnt cut it. im hoping that i can relieve these civs of their land, especially as i will have tech advantage in regards them.

[vmxa1]

With that map you may be able to get by with the top civs stopping each other from a double your culture win. This can be tricky as often a KAI will over run the other AI's.

You still have to worry about a 20K city, if one puts a lot of wonders in the same city.

If space is on, you may be able to beat it with that one. It is tricky as you need a city that has about twice the production of the best AI city.

I did it by the AI not going for the last part right away. It build a manufactoring plant instead and I build the last part.
We both could do it in the same number of turns.

I don't see much in the way of great land for your empire. If you could annex a few of the smaller civs, that would be good.

Too me you do not have enough land to ensure having all the required resources. You must have coal and iron to get those rails up to allow defending.

You will need bombers down the road to handle the massive ship bombardments that the AI is so fond of. Then they will send out carriers with bombers. These can make life very harsh, if you are not big enough to force them to stay in line.

Good luck.

[Mr Justice]

thanks vmxa1.

yea, i'm counting on the 3 top AIs slugging it out (they have been at war for atleast a few hundred years)

it looks like the no1 civ (hittites) are losing out to #3 (russia) on the land war. hittites are the big wonder producers so far, and are way ahead of anyone in culture, but they are losing some outer cities.

im not sure on 20K culture city, tis too early for meh to worry about this. untill i get an army in the field i can do nothing about this.

although i had another hammer blow last night.
no saltpeter on my island. in fact i checked out all the land i could see and only found 2 sources of saltpeter! (hittites and russia have it) so far ive had neither IRON, HORSES or SALTPETER within easy access. thats pretty poor placement, but i'll keep going and wait and see what COAL is like.

ive also lost my horses supply, hittites took it in a peacefully when they annexed that square due to culture growth. but horse are selling for price of a lux on the open market, so im not screwed on this fronyt.

will have to invade weaker civs with knights, trechubets and swiss mercs. im guuna raze all aquired citys and repopulate with settlers. Arabia is in my target sights, theyve no lux or reasources but they stand in the way oif MY GLOBAL DOMINANCE .
im thinking that effeciancy in city placement to optimise and ensure that i get as many size 6 towns as posisble to ensure i have minimum support costs.

on the positive side, i have real good shot at building admans smiths GW, i only need to steal economics to build it, and ive a city with a 420 shields into a palace build (adams smith is 600) with only one hittite city building it and that city has produces 7 sheilds per turn, and they have 35 turns to go and i can build it in around 15 turns.
that would reduce my maintence costs (around 100 atm) alot cause the only buildings ive built so far are
markets, banks, grainaries, aqaducts and harbours and courthouses. im earning ~450gpt on 100% tax. doing all my stealing on careful or safely.

im considering building a fleet of priveteers (10 or so) and just sending them against the big AIs to bombard their coasts. not sure how this would effect my relationships with the AIs. i know they know who the owner of a pirate is and i CANT afford to be attacked by the BIG AIs.

[Drachen]

Welcome to Sid Mr. Justice. You’ll want to be careful to cover your invasion forces with armies so that you can wear down the AI military with attacks by trebs/cannon and knights/cavalry. I had a stack of Swiss mercs in a city which defended well against a huge AI assault and I went from zero war weariness (WW) to total WW in one turn as a Republic. Each time a defender is attacked your WW increases so it doesn’t take long when the AI attacks with hundreds of units. I really think Monarchy/Communism is the way to go on Sid if you’re going to do much fighting. If you’re going to play builder you might consider aggressive pillaging to slow your opponents down. Caravels can get three unit armies and explorers to enemy lands and you’ll have a fair bit of time to pillage before WW sets in. Good luck.

[Drachen]

Originally posted by Mr Justice
i know they know who the owner of a pirate is and i CANT afford to be attacked by the BIG AIs.

I haven’t much use for privateers because they’re so weak, but I wouldn’t worry about being attacked by the AI. They tend to drop off a few units at a time in the same place turn after turn and so you can set these up to be leader factories with a few trebs and knights. These battles will give you the armies you need to cover your real invasion later.

[vmxa1]

Resources are the main reason you have to aquire lots of land in C3C.

I never tried republic at Sid, it just does not seem to make sense. I get to monarchy and stay there. If you can boost towns to cities, you get more support.

[Drachen]

I agree that Monarchy is the best Sid Government coming out of Despotism but have you tried the switch to Communism Vmxa? I think it's worthwhile if you can get the tech early without jeopardizing your ToE bid. I did a late game comparison after my first win and Communism just about halved my research time from Monarchy and even outperformed Democracy with the SPHQ and a large empire.