Au 201 spolier thread

[vmxa1]

That will flat get it.

[Theseus]

"GOT'CHER RESOURCES HERE!!!

HOT, FRESH RESOURCES!!

SELLIN'EM CHEAP!!"

[Chemical Ollie]

I still haven't played more than one hour of this map.

Thursday: My cordless mouse decided to call it a day. Change of batteries did not help. Tried to play with keyboard only, but you can't do diplomatics or micromanage the city screen without a mouse. Borrowed one from my job on friday.

Friday: My kids stayed up untill 2.30 AM. My wife was sleeping. How come a 2-year old never gets tired? Can't they understand that daddie has more important things to do? Like playing CIV.

Bye the way, thats a nice recource collection, Theseus!

[nbarclay]

I haven't played much more since my last update, largely because I've been trying to build a new computer. (I've sort of wanted a dual Athlon rig since before Athlons first came out, and I finally decided to take the plunge.)

The year is now 930 AD. Germany is reduced to a single city on an island to the east, and Rome and Persia no longer exist at all. I got my fourth leader in my mopping up against Germany and rushed Longevity before I even got Sanitation, but I failed to get a hoped-for fifth leader in my assaults on Rome's and Persia's final cities. I guess I'll have to build ToE the hard way, not that it will be all that hard with the kind of production powerhouse Thebes is becoming. I have Sanitation now, and am two turns away from Electricity. (By the way, one of the advantages to waiting for cavalry for my big invasion is that elite cavalry who face nothing stronger than pikemen and an occasional longbowman - yes, I had that big a tech lead - have relatively good odds of living long enough to produce leaders.)

Culturally, I'm coming up on the 25,000 barrier in a couple turns. I'd be a little farther along, but once I got industrialization, factories took priority over any cultural project bigger than a temple. (And many outlying cities are still working on Aqueduct/Marketplace combinations to grow without giving up WLTQD.) On the other hand, once I get the production from my factories and hospitals online, building everything else will go more quickly. Research has been at a 4-turn pace ever since Education, and although I had to run a deficit for one of the four turns going after Electricity, in general, I've had very nice surpluses. The AIs still haven't discovered Music Theory or Economics for me, but the Greeks and Iroquois have had Education for a while so they might get Music Theory at any time.

Nathan

[DaveMcW]

And now for something different...

I'm surprised no one else picked the chinese as an ultimate power civ. The egyptians just can't generate GLs fast enough for me, and I really wanted the pyramids without a despot GA.

Chairman Mao decides to play on emperor level with all victory conditions enabled.


4000 BC - Beijing is founded. The build order is 3 warriors, 4 settlers. Mao's research goal is wheel/horseback riding at 10% science.

3000 BC - Shanghai is founded 2 squares southwest of Beijing. This is the ultimate OCC location, with 5 cows, coastal, and only 3 ocean squares! Mao is tempted to restart and beat the game as an OCC, but that wouldn't really be ultimate power. So he does the next best thing and builds a temple, then the colossus for a science city.

1990 BC - The 5th city is founded. While Shanghai builds the colossus, the other four cooperate to build 2 warriors and 1 worker per city.

1600 BC - The four support cities build barracks, Shanghai finishes the colossus and begins a palace prebuild.

1400 BC - Chinese alchemists discover horseback riding, 4 chariots are upgraded. The great chinese army consists of 10 regular warriors and 4 veteran horsemen. Mao the Impatient declares war on India.

[DaveMcW]

1100 BC - Three hundred years of killing Indian warriors and archers has paid off - we have a great leader! The leader runs back to town, creates an army, the army runs back to the elite* horseman which is loaded and attacks another warrior for a victory. The palace build in Shanghai is changed to heroic epic for a loss of 40 shields.

925 BC - Second great leader! He runs to Shanghai and completes the pyramids.

900 BC - The French have completed the oracle in Paris.

730 BC - Mao's strategy of slowly advancing with a small elite force to create leaders is working beautifully. Since a large army is not needed, the core cities are building improvements and settlers to make up for the lost time creating a science city and early army. Suddenly... 4 french warriors run across the border near Paris, right outside an undefended new city.

710 BC - Sneak attack by the French! The new city is lost. Mao makes peace with India for their second-to-last city and sends his elites to train on the French.

650 BC - Third great leader! He buids the great lighthouse in Shanghai, the last wonder that any of his competitors was going for.

550 BC - Paris has fallen, giving the chinese the oracle. They now control every wonder invented; all except the oracle are in Shanghai.

210 BC - Mao becomes chairman of the new chinese republic. Shanghai builds the great wall, starting a golden age. The chinese now have a significant tech lead (and new techs in 4 turns) and control half the continent. The game is won, all that remains is to see how powerful the chinese can get and how soon Shanghai reaches 20k culture.

[vmxa1]

Good thing this was not a PTW with Elimination turned on. India out, no leaders.

[Chemical Ollie]

Re: And now for something different...

Originally posted by DaveMcW
I'm surprised no one else picked the chinese as an ultimate power civ.

I actually considered this at the start but decided against it, as I expected to start the conquest early. Riders are a little late.


Despite the early delay caused by the baddie hut, I became the no 1 civ in BC years. The peace deal with the Frogs took me from 6 techs behind into tech lead!. Wow! Curries and Rosbifs was conquered next one at a time. They had only 5 cities each against my 15 but still put up a very stubborn defence. My war chariots suffered huge casualties against their spearmen.

I have met the civs to the north and still have a small tech lead over Persia who is no 2 on the score board.

It is now around 500 AD, and I have about 1000 score. I own half my continent. Chivalry is just a few turns out, so I await that and upgrade the troops before I take on the next opponent. The Babs have the Great Wall and feudalism, so I probably need those knights. Or perhaps it would be wise to go for the Americans first, as soon as the mercy killing of the pity Joan is over.

Working my way to ultimate power, but it seems that I'm behind most of you? What did you get in the first hut?

[Theseus]

I got WAAAAY lucky, with a Settler.

BTW, although China rocks for a warmonger, I'll stand by Egypt as the true UP champ. Penitence and industrious virtue rule over all. I've never had such a great empire, so early, as in this game.

Also BTW, I think that this is a great game to point newer players to, especially the ones that post "I can't keep up in tech / have no money / can;t get any GWs / whatever"... the ones that Olaf and I posted are good, but this baby's insane.

[Dominae]

I tried this game briefly as an OCC; I was really tempted by the amazing start, and I thought it would be pretty funny to "flunk out" of AU 201 by doing the antithesis of UP. Anyway, long story short, even with the great start OCC is really really hard on a large map. I was doing pretty well until I lost Newton's University. Things went downhill from there, as the Persians and the Babylonians got about 6 techs ahead of me, with me at 2 gold.

So, have fun all of you who are lured by UP. I'll be playing PTW, but l'll check back in here to see how things are going.


Dominae

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Theseus
I got WAAAAY lucky, with a Settler.

Aaah, lucky you! I met some evil dudes who killed my warrior, took all my gold, destroyed my produced shields and killed some population. Only my worker survived, as I had moved him away from the action. Because of this, my REX phase ended with the first ring of cites, while the AI had taken the rest of the land. Even if we were allowed to restart, I decided that it was more of a challenge to take it like a man and catch up by warfare.

That is something to think of for all you tournament creators: huts adds more randomness to the outcome and reduce the impact of skill. A difference between getting barbarians that attack your undefended capitol or getting a settler in the first hut is huge.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Olaf HÃ¥rfagre


Aaah, lucky you! I met some evil dudes who killed my warrior, took all my gold, destroyed my produced shields and killed some population. Only my worker survived, as I had moved him away from the action. Because of this, my REX phase ended with the first ring of cites, while the AI had taken the rest of the land. Even if we were allowed to restart, I decided that it was more of a challenge to take it like a man and catch up by warfare.

That is something to think of for all you tournament creators: huts adds more randomness to the outcome and reduce the impact of skill. A difference between getting barbarians that attack your undefended capitol or getting a settler in the first hut is huge.

Agreed! As I mentioned in the download thread, I restarted after getting unlucky with barbarians in the first hut. I actually had two warriors to try to fend them off, but I split them to try to protect both Thebes and my worker, and a barbarian got lucky in a cross-river attack on Thebes. As I recall, all I lost besides my warrior was one pop unit, but that was enough that if I played it out, I wouldn't get to see what I'm capable of on this map with a normal start. On the restart, I got a tech; I think it was Warrior Code but I'm not sure.

By the way, when I was running the Apolyton unofficial tournament of the month (before I gave up on it because so many other games were going on), I set barbarian activity to none to keep huts from skewing the results. But since the AU games aren't abouyt competition, I'm not too worried about it here.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

It's now 1180 AD, and I finally got around to finishing off Germany. The battle was really a let-down: I sent over my cavalry army for defense, all five surviving elite cavalry that had not yet genrated leaders, an elite sword unit, and two veteran cavalry, and all Germany had to defend the city was a single pikeman! The one attacker I needed to take the city didn't even get scratched!

I finally finished railroading my empire a few turns ago, and I've been doing a lot of build-and-disband to build up outlying areas of my home continent and rush buying to build up outlying areas on the other continent and nearby islands. (Even so, I'm keeping my military "about the same size" as the Iroquois and Greek forces.) I've been averaging about a thousand gold per turn surplus lately (without Smith's!), although it went down a little when I started on Refining. The free unit support under Democracy is a definite help: right now, I'm hovering a little over 100 units and my free support is in the same area. I did finally get Bach's about three turns ago, thanks to Iroquois science; I'm hoping I'll be able to get Smith's before too much longer. My culture is up to a hair under 40,000, and climbing at a rate of over 750 per turn (and accelerating now that most of my empire is finished with the courthouse/factory/police station bit).

Nathan

[Chemical Ollie]

Aarrgghh! The Greeks are building all my wonders! And I haven't even found them. My boat sunk when I tried (surprise). They stole Sistine right before my eyes and then Copernicus which I can't even build yet. Leonardo is just 6 turns away and I am prebuilding a palace to change to Bach's. ¤&#@! if I miss those. I had quite low science rate from 600 to 1000 AD to catch up in unit upgrades and city improvements. I thought the GL should help me to keep up, but no.

It is now 1000 AD and I just conquered my home continent. The remains of France was overrun in one turn, and the Yanks had only spearmen and a few swords to slow my 30+ knight horde down. They took perhaps 5 turns to finish.

The Persians declared war when I refused them contact with the Babs. How ridiculous! They did not even know where my continent was, as I had given them no maps.

They never got the chance to met the Babylonians, as I was about to take on them next. I attacked with forty knights in stacks of ten on each border city simultaniously. None of their cities could stop the first wave, despite that they were defended by plenty of pikemen and bowmen. The 2 last cities, including Babylon, were tougher nuts to crack as they upgraded all defenders to musketmen. But with a few turns to build up the siege force with newly rested troops, the whole continent was finally mine. I haven't seen a single leader in all wars. Perhaps China would had been a better choice after all?

I decided against sailing to Persia with my knights, as that would take forever with only galleys. They were happy to make peace in the fictive war.

Now I don't know what to do. The still unknown Greeks seem ahead of me in tech, but I am undoubtfully number one in all other aspects. I have set my fully developed core cities to produce wealth, while most of the conquered cities need further improvements. I think I will play balanced and rush as many buildings as I can but still keep the research rate of a new tech each 5-6 turns. I still have no FP, and still haven't decided if I will build it just north of my capitol to be able to later move the palace or if I should build it further north on my continent.

Now it's time to sleep after a good days work...

[nbarclay]

1250 AD, a little over 45,000 culture and growing at almost a thousand a turn. I finally got a chance to get started on Smith's! The game shouild be over with a cultural victory by 1500 if I don't get too bored (or in too big a hurry for PTW) first. Definitely Ultimate Power.

Some people just can't be satisfied. Take a look at my idiot of a trade advisor.

Nathan