Au402 Dar4: 10ad-1000ad

[Catt]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Do RoPs really matter in galley explorations? I normally just promise to leave and do so as quickly as I can get my galleys across to the other end of the civ. (And it's not like I'm being any less polite than AIs typically are in that regard; at least I'm planning to get out of their territory in some kind of reasonable timeframe.)

I put RoPs in place for three reasons, none of which are particularly strong: (1) not having to deal with teleporting galleys should that come about; (2) AI attitude / relations; and (3) a roleplay aspect. Knowing what I later learned of the map, I probably wouldn't have been teleported out of territory too often, and the possession of the GL meant that I could probably do a bunch of exploring without the need to enter borders.

Had I been forced to actually pay anything serious for RoPs, I would have used them a lot less often. However, given the decent REX (value of RoP depends on territory controlled) I was in most circumstances able to trade RoPs straight up or grab some loose change from the AI's. I'm pleased with the end result -- I think I paid 20 gold to Babylon for an RoP early and never paid again. Everybody is polite with me; and every few turns I get an offer to resume an expired RoP, taking in connection with the resumption a refreshed map and any gold the AI's might have accumulated. As we head into the Industrial Age with several powerful civs running around with caravels and galleons, I'll probably tend to back off some of the RoPs. But for now, Queen Elizabeth is almost universally admired

Catt

[nbarclay]

I don't remember ever receiving a "remove your forces or declare war" demand as a result of explorations by a ship. (Of course my exploring ships are essentially always empty, which may possibly make a difference.)

[vmxa1]

I can not say anymore if I had a scout in any of those off China. All explorer ships where empty but the one that had a left over scout. I had some hopes of finding a hut to pop.

[Rhothaerill]

Well I finally have a chance to write this DAR. My game is going fairly slowly right now. I'm up to about a 2 1/2 minute lag time between turns. But I'm going to continue to press on. I like the way the game is going so far despite the long turns.

This game has turned into a very builderesque game for me. I had started sending out exploration galleys before the last DAR but they were suiciding. I was finally able to get one to survive the one turn it took to get to the Egyptian/Arab landmass. And I discovered that they are backward. Like everyone else I noticed that they have no luxuries and a lot of desert. Even though they've known each other for a long time they were still both lagging behind me in everything but military size. I was able to grab their maps and only one tech for one of my own. To further complicate matters for them, they went to war soon after I found them, further stalling their tech progression. I sent more galleys around their island and found several areas of sea jutting out into the ocean that were just begging to be explored. Unfortunately, not a single galley survived more than one turn.

On a positive note, I did have one galley survive several turns in a trip north that ended in the discovery of the Chinese. They had construction, but hadn't even researched writing yet so they were pretty far behind me as well. Construction and their map came fairly expensive, but it was worth it. Looking at their island I find many incense tiles, and not one single iron. That means no swordsman, no pikemen, and even better...no riders. Until someone gets to navigation or magnetism and trades with them, they will be a military pushover (relatively speaking). Dreams of controlling what could possibly be the entire incense trade danced in my head and I decided that China would be my first conquest...as soon as I got Navigation. Other than the two galleys that discovered the three civs I know, not a single one lasted more than one turn outside the coast. I lost over 20 galleys and decided that more exploration right away wasn't going to be too viable.

Part of the reason I lost so many galleys is that I missed getting the Great Lighthouse. In retrospect I just didn't start the pre-build early enough. Like Theseus suggestion I should have taken some time to research masonry before beelining to map making. Then I almost assuredly would have built it. But even worse than missing the Great Lighthouse, I transferred over to the Great Library and then missed that one too. A wonder domino followed and I missed out on every single ancient age wonder. Oh well, at least I ended up with a nice library.

Thanks to my decision to go builder, I pushed forward to the Republic and began to push libraries, marketplaces, etc. in all my cities to get a good base going. I completely stopped building units, figuring to do that after my commercial base is up. Not too much activity has happened since. My cities have been gradually getting better, and I was soon able to start producing units for the future in my better cities. I deliberately left my iron unroaded so I could build horseman and warrior units to upgrade to knights and swordsman.

On the tech end of things, because there was no trading going on I had to research everything myself. I left monarchy off the list (figuring to trade for it later). Once I entered the middle ages I took the top branch of the tech tree all the way through Navigation. The reason for this was twofold. If I reached Navigation then my galleys (and caravels after astronomy) could pass through the ocean and discover all the other civs before they found me. Plus if I found several of them I could trade for the bottom half of the tech tree for my military techs (which I'd need for taking over China). I knew that the most powerful civs were researching that branch because there was a small wonder cascade a few turns before 1,000ad. First Sun Tzu's was built, and then Leo's. I had Barcelona within a few turns of building the Sistine Chapel and was holding my breath for a turn, but no one built it. Either they were too far away from it or didn't have Theology yet. I was somewhat annoyed that Leo's was built since it's one of my favorite wonders to have, but I have enough gold for my upgrades.

As it stands now my plans are proceeding very well. I'm 8 turns from Navigation as well as getting the Sistine Chapel (which means I'll be able to knock the luxury slider down a peg for more tech research) and I have quite a few units in Santander waiting for upgrade to be able to take on China. They are already militarily weak compared to me (and that's before my upgrades) and they don't know anyone still. After I researched astronomy I sent several explorer caravels out to get ready for Navigation and contacting other civs. My master plan is proceeding well!

More to come later...

[Theseus]

840AD:

It's been a builder's dream. Having fully settled the founding island and the SE iron island, every town / city gets at minimum a temple and a market, and, for the vast majority, a harbor. Major cities get cathedrals, and distant towns work on courthouses. Once all that is in place, big producers started working on GWs, and all other cities on Spearmen (have not connected the iron), Archers / Berzerks, and Caravels.

This is the year that I meet most everyone... I'm in a firm tech lead over even the most advanced AI civs (Germany and the Ottomans), with Theology and Education. I will keep researching forward in the "Education Corridor", maintaining research dominance and impoverishing everyone else.

I am #1 in population, GNP, annual income, and productivity... and this is not having yet had my GA!!

I consider starting some Machiavellian distant wars, but, being in republic, I choose instead to unleash hell all at once down the road, with concurrent Berzerk attacks on Carthage to the west and Egypt and the Arabs to the east... I'll combine that with a number of faux wars against the larger AI civs.

1000AD

I just traded off banking for ungodly sums (e.g., from Germany I got 91 gpt, 300g, and WM). I've got all the most advanced AI civs trapped behind music theory and astronomy, and believe I'll be able to snag all of the late Middle Age GWs.

At 0.8.2 I'll have navigation in 10 turns, which is critical to my planned two front war, the Berzerkfest. It's hard to see, but I am bulking up troops in the northwest... easy stuff first, so the Spears and Caravels have mostly been built, with the extremely expensive Berzerks to come. I've decided to wait for the Berzerkfest, even though just one win would trigger my GA... probably the wrong thing to do technically, but hey, it feels good.

[Mountain Sage]

it's very interesting to compare the strenght of different civs in our game. In 1000AD, I am the tech leader (+2)(Carthage), the Ottomans are 4 techs behind (-4), Germany is at -3, the French are down to 3 cities (thanks to the Germans), Rome is down to 2 cities.

The new 'powerhouses' will be Germany (for is size), Persia (-1, but small), and Babylon (-1 and size).
In 1200-1300 AD, I will have to do something about them...
Greece has still to research 4 techs in the Ancient Age...

[vmxa1]

You what would be interesting is that instead of the name, give the location and name.
IOW if Germany has the most land at this point where are they located on the map? It may turn out that the top civ is always on a certain start location.
In my game it is Mongols, then Germany and Russia.
I think I posted a mini map. I am not playing on a PC that is not hooked up to the WWW, so posting images is very tedious. I will port over the final save to get some screenies, if I can hang in that long.

[Theseus]

At this point the civ leaders in my game (other than me ) were:

Germany - Center top, above pink France (btw, they were more or less equal until Bizzie handed Joan an *ss-whupping).

Ottomans and Mongols - Sharing the fantastic land at the bottom right.

At this point I have not met 5 civs, I think.

[nbarclay]

Dominae, correct me if I'm wrong, but my assumption has been that only the human-playable civs float around from place to place. And those all start isolated enough and/or with little enough land that it's unlikely for any of them to be contenders.

The Mongols and Ottomans both have excellent starting positions. If one of them gets the upper hand over the other, they're in great shape to become a superpower. (The Ottomans got the Pyramids in my game, setting them up to outgrow, outproduce, and ultimately conquer the Mongols. And having Sun Tsu's so all their new units would be vets certainly didn't hurt either.)

Germany is in pretty good shape if one of the AIs in the main block gets the Great Lighthouse, because sooner or later, the Great Lighthouse civ is almost sure to come calling and provide them with contact. But if the Great Lighthouse ends up in the hands of the human player and the human player refuses to provide contact, or if it ends up in the hands of an AI that isn't within Great Lighthouse range of them, they're in a much tougher position. With only France and maybe a human player as trading partners at least until sometime after Astronomy, they are likely to have some catching up to do.

Russia has an even tougher position contact-wise, as evidenced by the fact that vmxa1 seems to be the only one to have had any significant dealings with them in the time frame covered by this DAR (and maybe the only one to have contact with them at all; I think I missed it by one turn). They have nice land, but it's hard to imagine their being major contenders until late in the game unless the human player finds them early with suicide galleys and does a lot of trading with them.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Dominae, correct me if I'm wrong, but my assumption has been that only the human-playable civs float around from place to place. And those all start isolated enough and/or with little enough land that it's unlikely for any of them to be contenders.

That's right. Due to the size of the map and the number of civs, I goofed on this a little bit: some unassigned starting locations are in fact more powerful than the assigned ones. For instance, some players have reported that Carthage is quite powerful in their games, which should not happen since Carthage was one of the playable civs. The reason for this is that, as I said above, it was simply too tedious to run tests to determine if everything was "just right". So, the civ + start spot pairs closest to the starting position are well-defined (so that games until the Industrial Age look alike), while those more further out are not. I wanted the Russians and the Ottomans to be powerful. I did not expect the Russians to be so backward, or the Mongols to be strong competitors. I had also hoped Egypt and Arabia would have been more of a challenge, but I guess the AI needs lots and lots of Shields to do anything right.


Dominae

[Catt]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I don't remember ever receiving a "remove your forces or declare war" demand as a result of explorations by a ship. (Of course my exploring ships are essentially always empty, which may possibly make a difference.)

It's definitely happened to me in the past and I think (but can't be certain) that it has happened with empty ships -- I would expect that an A/D unit on board makes a difference insofar as the formula takes into account the number of units interloping, but can't say whether a land unit is required to cause an explusion. With the GL, the risk would be extremely low in any event as there was a fair number of sea tiles outside any cultural borders.

Catt

[Mountain Sage]

10AD – 1000AD The Fourth Age

The millennium was, as expected, a time of discovery. Discovery of new islands, civilizations, trade possibilities, technologies and wonders. It was also a time of peace and prosperity, where our people (and cities) had ample time to grow.

30AD: contacts with France and Germany. Interesting one-sided trade. Now they are broke. Egypt at war with Arabia.
190AD: Anarchy. This looks to be a prerequisite for Republic, so be it. Btw, contact with Russia, Korea and the Aztecs. Traded Philosophy for 350 gold. Now 3 more civs are broke.
210AD: All hail the Republic of Carthage. Hannibal, for once an optimist, disbanded all the military.
320AD: our sages say we entered a New Age with a 3 techs bonus. Researching Monotheism at 18 turns.
330AD: Persia finished the Great Wall. We’ll have to keep an eye to that one.
350AD: Egypt annihilated Arabia. Well, they were uninteresting anyway…
360AD: contact with Babylon. Wow! They are big, but isolated. We traded Literature and Polytheism for 679 gold. Another broke civ.
420AD: contacts with Spain an all other civs on the ‘sausage’. After a bit of trading, we got a 2-techs lead and another 500+ gold in our coffers. Now we know where we stand. We have contacts with 16 civs, 1 is dead. With Carthage, that makes 18 out of 24.
500AD: contact with Greece. Pretty, small, isolated and utterly backward. We took pity on them and traded their ‘world map’ for Masonry.
580AD: Persia is getting stronger. Therefore, we traded Monotheism for 180 gold and 38/turn.
740AD: France and Germany are at war.
830 AD: Sistine is build. Damn! Now we have to build those expensive Catherdrals…
910AD: the Mongols threatened us… The Monwhat?
920AD: after Gunpowder, we started on Education and will go for Smith’s and Democracy.
940AD: 2nd French-German war. We trade Chivalry with France for 200 gold and 13/turn. We hope they survive…
990AD: Persia builds Sun Tsu.

Comments: trading is the heart of victory. I decided early on to get a small tech lead only, but to bleed all others civs dry. This is working very well. We have now 7’500+ gold and are on 20% happiness, 80% research at –30/-50 gold/turn, more than compensated by the gold we get from tech trading. We also started to play the usual checks-and-balance game (no contacts between civs, helping France and Rome…).

[Mountain Sage]

A bit of humor. I really like these 'exotic' names....

[Dominae]

I believe that's a real name, 'Iol'.


Dominae

[cumi]

A city called (LOL). Nice.