AU402 DAR6: After 1500AD

[vmxa1]

Ok slap me if thsi is not proper. I can see it may be some time before this puppy is finished, at least by me.
I figure this could be a place to drop in any thoughs, progress after 1500AD and maybe one more thread for the finish or in this one.

[vmxa1]

I had planned to do a small update after my war with cleo, but this game is killing me. I had gotten several crashes today and the last one really hurts. I was going around the horn making trades and had done all but 4 and boom. I mean I am not anxious to load this back up (almost a minute for that alone). The game was starting to be fun as I had some action, but the trades are unreal. Often I just sit there after saying I accept and it looks like it is stuck. I can move my cursor and after maybe 20-30 seconds it goes to the next screen? I had many of these is this session, so I almost saved it in case, but I was worried that I would come back and not know whom I had not traded with. Then the game crashed
The lag for turns is almost 3 mins all the time now. Wars are starting and Oceans tiles are open to many.
It is 1580AD and I recently built my only wonder (Observatory). I had Adams underway and no one has start it. It is a long build for me, so it is not a given.
I elected to trade Econ to get Nav and what ever else I could and hope for the best.
I had gotten Nav and was able to trade Gems and was getting all kinds of lux and cash. I was finally going to be able to make some moves. I had a few caravels off to attack Cleo, but was waiting on MPP/RoP for Arabia.
I got an elite with some of the units Cleo landed on the NewCastle island. A bunch of places were about to finish their banks.
I was 9th out of the 23. All civs known. I was working towards Newtons. I had some hopes of getting a leader out of my war.
I am well under way with the tundra island and probably the only player still growing into empty lands.
Lots of weak civs near by, once I go to full out troop building. Magnetism not that far off and then UU for a nice big fat GA.
I need a break before I start this crying again.
Now all I have to do is remember what trades I made to whom.

[CorpusScorpius]

Dont feel bad Vmx1 I was Playing the Spanish on Regent & made it to 1756 AD & the same crash happened to me But I am restarting from an earlier save & will see if it is salvageable.

[vmxa1]

I normally play with no auto save and only save when I walk around for awhile, but I am not saving at the each turn and even in the middle of trading. It sems if I trade with the mongols it kill the game. This meant I could not trade with them and someone else got to trade my tech to them, ugh.

[vmxa1]

I ran down the lasted sound driver and it turns out RADEON had a new drive this month. Put them on and ran for a few hours and then it was dive dive dive.
Seem to happen during trading. This has hurt me several times as I find a race that I can not trade with or it will crash. This cost me a nice deal with the Mongols and the next turn tehy get my tech from one of the civs I traded to, thinking it would swap it all around.
So it has cost me stuff and put it in some one else hands.
So I am still slugging away, but it is brutal. Times range from 3 minutes up to 6 minutes. Not sure what is going on at those times. I want to just play peaceful as I can to see how far the game will go before I lose my mind or it end. The whole idea for me was to see what the impact of this map was on the sysem. It is pretty severe.
I intend to drop a save at some point on to my Win98SE system and see how it handles it.
I am at 1770 and about to end my GA. Bad timing as no wonders were available to build, but I will have factories in place.

[vmxa1]

Had Celo declare war and send a few units to Iron isle, which were easy to handle. After awhile we made peace with no more action.
Mongols declare war and send piece meal about 20 ships and more than 20 units. They were no problem as they tried to atack me on the homeland, where I had a big fleet of ManOWar. I sunk all, about half landed.
Eventually we made peace. Mongls are in first place by far.
I had my GA then as well. Very tempting to try to grab more land, but not doing that in this one.
I trade tech for luxs, gpt and gold until I have all the 6 missing luxs.
When they expire I do it with another tech. Of course I trade that tech to all that are without it. Not allowing others to trade it.
One time India's spice trade expired and I did not want to trade tech at that time. I offer about 800 gold and map, they would be insulted? They had basically no money and 5 spice doing nothing and could not see a benefit of a trade?
1896 or there abouts Russia sent one lone Med Inf to attack a city in the tundra island that had a wall, forted infantry or two and a calv unit? They sent a galleon to the far edge of the island. This was funny as the city was only a few tiles from one of their own cities? I sunk the ship with artie and Ironclad.
Russia made two embargos against me with civs I had no trade with.
I got nasty and the next turn a few lux expired. I went around and traded a tech for lux + cash + gpt and all but one accepted ally vs russia as an after thought.
Even a couple that did not want to trade for the tech agree to ally anyway. Russia is 2nd or 3rd. I am 5th.
So now 1 civ is not involved and all others declare war on russia. I will not do anythng but defend.
Battle field up, IA up, Wall street soon. 1300 gpt extra to add to 23k or so I have on hand.
Hoover Dam is 3 or 4 turns away and I have not seen any one start it yet. No leader, man these non mil civs are brutal for leaders. A few vets had 4 wins and no promotion to elite.
Still having lots of crashes and have opened dialog with Firaxis and my PC supplier. I think this would have been over otherwise. Time lag is not changed much, but with all civs at war we shall see.

[vmxa1]

I think we need a table or an array for the civs like in Warlords III. I have no reasonable way to know who is trading with whom or if they are at war.
I would have to cycle through selecting a new civ, 16 times and write down the info. Anyone doing that?
I have seen a few want to have 32 civs in a game, ouch.
At around 1920 so many civs were at war with someone and often more than one civ, that turns are runnning 17 + minutes. It was 14 minutes in 1916, but more civs declared war with Germany.
I am shooting straight as I can for Flight. This will give me the ability to bust an airport on each island. I will stick many in the home land. This will allow me to ship units to any island that comes under siege and put out the fire.
Eventually all cities will get one, except on the tundra island. Then it will be bullet proof until nukes. I would hope a vote comes up by then. Without armies it will be hard to invade anyone, not that I want to do that.

[BigDork]

Hi all...

Things are going slow for me. But I've got a good book so it's all good.

I've only managed to get in a few more turns but now my war with the Arabs is over. Every turn a few galleys would sail up and drop off some units. I'd send my berserkers out to deal with them. Every turn I'd lose one or two more. Soon it was starting to look ugly.*

Luckily my little task force of 9 berserkers was nearing it's destination, Damascus. It wasn't a pretty fight in any way. Damascus was size 12 on a hill. Pikemen vs. berserkers for the most part. I lost several but won the day. Then I went for peace. There were other Arab units in sight and I didn't have the defense to deal with them. My musketmen were still a few turns away. Also I only had 2 berserkers actually in Damascus. All the other living ones were still on the boats with no movement points left.

Peace wasn't as profitable as I was hoping. I really wanted to get chivalry out of the deal but it didn't happen. Instead I got 150 gold. Eh, it's something. Then I turned around and got chivalry from the Germans in a big deal which also got me ivory.

Oh yeah, I know have contact with the French and Germans. It cost me a bunch to get world maps and stuff but I quickly got that back selling them contact with the Chinese. I then got RoPs with both so I could sail on to discover more civs.

I'm starting to build up a bunch of horsemen and knights. As soon as I get MT they're gonna be cavalry and then I have to decide who to go after. I'm thinking China and all their incense. But I just might take out the Arabs and finish what I started. I might even have Cleo help. And then take out Cleo. Dunno, we'll see when it happens. I'm gonna try to get frigates and galleons first.

*I can be stupid as hell sometimes. What I should have done was line my units along the shore so they couldn't land. I have no clue what I was thinking.

Here's a screen from the turn I took Damascus and called off the war with the Arabs. The boat to the east of Damascus is my musketmen. You can also see all the galleys around the small island.

BigD

[vmxa1]

BigDork that is what I did you prevent a landing on the Horse Island. I set a worker on one mountain and a troop on the other two and they could not land.
This prevents any attacks there until Marines.
I could have sent over enough units to defend, but why bother.
Last turn was 18 minutes and then it crashed as soon as it popped up for me to act. I actually had it Cntl-S to save it, but was too late.

[vmxa1]

By 1934 I was forced to clear out the tundra island. I had intended not to take any cities, but when Russia took the one Ottoman city next to me and I looked at the fact that Russia had 266 infanry, I decided to not let them be on the island.
I sent 4 arties and 1 calv with 3 infantry over to augment the meager troops. I think I never had more than 20 units at any time on the island.
I used my 5 arties to bomb down cities from 11-12 size to 1 or 2. when they had only 2 units in the city and none had more than 2 hp, I attacked and captured. The Russians never sent any help to the island. I slowly took all cities over.
They even had one infantry attack my forted 3 calv units? I lost a calv, but they lost a unit that could have help hold a city.
If they had sent even 10 infantry from their huge army I would have never tried to take down the cities. If they send 20-30 units they could have captured the whole island.
I have not looked at the mongols who are in first place, but they must really have a large army. They have more than twice as many cities as I have.
My total unit count including workers is 212. I am not adding more than 3-5 per turn.
I only have one spy placed as I am only adding them as a civ declares war on me.

[vmxa1]

OK at 1940's with 21 of the 22 civs at war with someone, turns are running 20 minutes.
I have had so much touble on this PC (Pent IV 3.06GH 1GB memory, Radeon 9800 PRO with XP PRO) that I move the save over to my Win98SE PC (Pent IV 1.7GH 512MB, I forget the video card I think it is a Geforce 3).
The load of the save took almost 4 minutes. The first turn took 36 minutes.
I did not look at the usage, but on XP box it was using 50-52% cpu and around 288MB memory.
Both have the 7200 rpm hard drive.
The Win98 machine is in another room so it will be a pain to keep an eye on it.

[BigDork]

vmxa1...

That sounds nasty. My copmuter is only about a 1.8 with 128MB or memory. I'm so looking forward to the modern age....umm, no. But I'm gonna see just how bad it is.

Time for some more 402 action.

BigD

[vmxa1]

If the civs are not all at war it is not so bad or if you eliminated some. I am not doing that just to see how painful it can get.

[BigDork]

Psycho

[vmxa1]

Yeah, but it not so bad now as I just wander over to the PC from time to time and respond to any pop ups.
It is hard to keep track of any thing you wanted to accomplish.
Right now that is not much. I have Airports on all island and I am making bombers/fighters until I get tanks.