AU501 - Post-game comments

[Mountain Sage]

I called it the 'Lost WWF Tribe'

[ducki]

nbarclay - I think you are blowing your distaste for the map a bit out of proportion - in my opinion.
Regarding settling far-off islands, i.e. the "South Pacific" in AU501, I never find it "not worth it" in terms of resources. A temple, harbour and perhaps a rushed marketplace mean I can keep the max-6 citizens happy, and the unit support means my garrison doesn't cost me. If it's far away enough, it doesn't impact corruption in my nearer cities. If it's high-food, I can get some specialists out of it to make it profitable. Even on non-finagled maps, I almost always find some lategame resource on those little islands. Win-win-win-win.

Further, considering the fact that Dom gave us a 4-turn pump to go from and the fact that this is the Power of Seafaring, I fully expected to have to chase after lategame resources - I feel a bit like I cheated myself by expanding so much, and then Russia and I hit Uranium at the same time and I was able to buy one of hers.

Maybe the fact that I expanded enough to not have resource problems tints my view of your complaints, but this is the best game I've had in a long time.
Chalk it up to different playstyles, I guess.
I had a harder time keeping enough luxuries supplied, but even that wasn't enough to detract from my game.

[ZargonX]

I'm curious; who did everyone end up having as the big, backward civ in their game? I've seen a lot of people mentioning how tough Russia was, and how the Maya weren't a factor. In my game, it was the complete opposite; Maya were advanced, nasty brutes, and the Russians sat on their big ol' island an age behind everyone. Just curious how the spread worked out...

[jshelr]

Originally posted by ZargonX
I'm curious; who did everyone end up having as the big, backward civ in their game? I've seen a lot of people mentioning how tough Russia was, and how the Maya weren't a factor. In my game, it was the complete opposite; Maya were advanced, nasty brutes, and the Russians sat on their big ol' island an age behind everyone. Just curious how the spread worked out...

There are lots of "butterfly effects" in repeat play of a civ start. Russia and the Maya were both state-of-the art players in my game. I think maybe tech trading can send one civ or another into a lead arbitrarily and sometimes the lead then widens.

[ducki]

Re: the butterfly - Dutch and Maya were very strong for a long time - Dutch being my main client for many many techs - but as their war dragged on(2 full ages) both gradually had less and less money to trade with and fell behind, while Sumeria and England caught back up mostly and Russia (having taken out Egypt) was a research/cash powerhouse that was my only source of something - probably a luxury or two, and later Uranium - so I kept them happy and sending me money, just like Sumeria. Noone else had enough money to trade, though I gifted lots of techs to Maya's enemies to keep them competitive, as well as resources(Iron, Luxuries, Horses, Saltpeter).

Had the Dutch quit fighting with the Maya long enough to get back on track, they'd likely have been as strong or stronger than Russia and myself(but not both).

[ZargonX]

Ah, see, the wars definately play a factor. I managed to keep my two top rivals, the Dutch and the Maya, at war with each other for most of the industrial age. During that time, England, who up to that point was a 2nd-rate civ, caught up and surpassed them both, becoming my chief competitor. England was, by the end, the only civ who was actually in the space race with me. As for Russia, I still don't know how they dug themselves such a hole

[ZargonX]

Ah, see, the wars definately play a factor. I managed to keep my two top rivals, the Dutch and the Maya, at war with each other for most of the industrial age. During that time, England, who up to that point was a 2nd-rate civ, caught up and surpassed them both, becoming my chief competitor. England was, by the end, the only civ who was actually in the space race with me. As for Russia, I still don't know how they dug themselves such a hole

[Dominae]

Some comments from scenario design:

1. Maya and Russia were meant to be the top competitors (other than the human player, of course!).

2. Maya and France would split most of the Ancient era Wonders between them, then the Mayans would claim them all by conquering the French.

3. Russia was supposed to off Egypt quite easily and become a powerhouse the biggest continent, but for some reason Egypt always put up quite a fight. What really hurts the AI is very loose city-spacing when there's land available. Just compare the Dutch or Hittite placements to the Russians'.

4. I never expected the Dutch to be a big dog, just another rich civ to trade with (and maybe an additional competitor in the space race). I'm actually quite impressed with what the AI did with the Netherlands.

5. England also did suprisingly well, given the shape of her continent.

6. I absolutely love people's experiences with Japan (i.e. hordes of of technologically backward troops trying to repulse foreign influences). Very historical, I would say. I'm surprised no one tried to trade for Ivory to build the Statue of Zeus, and take on the more important foes first (the Sumerians and the Hittites).

7. The AI loves to found city-colonies in remote locations to grab resources (either Strategic or Luxury). I felt this would provide an interesting challenge, especially given the theme of the scenario.

8. The counter-balance to #7 for human player was, of course, the simple ability to get the AI to enter useless wars because it cannot coordinate intercontinental invasions properly. Although it was not really possible to pull the standard "I'll weaken civs A and B by making them fight" trick, the "I'll just get all the civs to go to war to make their economy suffer" trick was almost too easy here.


Dominae

[vmxa1]

SirOsis is attempting the SoZ.

[Catt]

By my entry to the Industrial Age, Russia had pulled into a 1st tier civ position; the Dutch had been there for a while; the Maya were strong (just a bit behind).

The English were competitive, but a few steps back -- call them 2nd tier.

The Sumerians were 3rd tier -- well back but not at the bottom of the barrel.

The French, Hittites, and Japanese were terminally backwards. The Egyptians had been eliminated by the Russians early.

Catt

[Mountain Sage]

nbarclay,

I understand your frustration. I also had to chase coal, aluminium, rubber and uranium around the world as there was not enough to be traded around. I had to switch my building civilian queues to military ones, which I just hate.
However, it is true that this play is about seafaring, i.e. exploration and the settling of distant islands (to tell you frankly, I didn't even know those SW islands, one with aluminium, existed).
I had much fun with this game, even if it developed a bit to aggressive for lack of resources.
But see the bright side of it. We managed to win, when most other civs either just disappeared or were not able to put together all resources neede for the spaceship.
Since the scarcity of resources seems to be a given with C3C, I believe we are in for a long time, unless you mod the game or a new patch comes out.

As for he KAI's, yes, Maya and Russia (after the 'absorbtion' of Egypt) become very powerful, but only at the end of the game. As for the Dutch, their small territory and the lack of some resources was their doom, more than repetitive wars.

[Aqualung71]

Post Game Comments

This was my first AU game and I must say it was most enjoyable and educational, even if it did screw up my life for a whole week. It is good to learn and compare play styles/results with some of the acknowledged master. Thanks to all those responsible for putting it together.

First, to answer Dom’s questions:

1. The power of Seafaring - has been quite well debated on these forums. Personally I love it and have played the Dutch several times. This game has demonstrated that Seafaring can be extremely map-dependent (eg, the presence or otherwise of sea-lanes). It’s probably a narrow trait, in that I’m not sure I ould bother on anything other than Archipelago maps, although on smaller maps sizes it could still give good benefits. The key point it highlights clearly is the huge benefits associated with early contact. This has a demonstrable effect in helping to keep you in the tech race during the Ancient Age at Emperor or above.

This was the first time I had played the Byzantines though, and I loved the Dromon – hugely powerful Ancient Age unit. On Archipelago it virtually renders all other early forms of artillery unnecessary. I was however pretty miffed to say the least that when Caravels became available I could no longer build the Dromon, so an attacking naval unit with bombard was replaced by a defensive troop carrier. That doesn’t make sense to me.

On the other hand, I had not previously played with Scientific civ’s very much, and I was very pleasantly surprised. The combination of the 2 traits is very powerful indeed.

2. Civ3 in general – I hate it. I need to get a life!

3. Differently – I would have invaded all of Japan, Sumeria and Hittites much earlier. I commented in my DAR’s that having a smaller empire for longer cost me in the research race. I have to work on MM, settler pumps and building territory size with adequate defence before too many buildings. Basically, my ancient age game sucks, which you can see from my closing power screenshot. Overall though, IMHO the game set-up channeled most players into similar strategies with a few exceptions.

4. Most trouble – in terms of overall competition it was the Dutch. Difficult to explain because they had such a small empire. The Russians started strongly but faded very quickly for some reason. I think the mods encouraged the AI to stick to Democracy and also allowed more tech trading, which IMHO gave the AI’s the opportunity to be much more competitive for much longer, even if they will never be able to “think” strategically. There were a few short wars with the Maya, English (including having my Capital nuked and destroying a half-built SS component!), the 2,200 year Russian war where not a shot was fired….but nothing too threatening that wasn’t caused by me!

5. Plague – what plague?

6. AU Mod and Gameplay – see detailed comments in second post below.

7. Easter eggs – well there was the “mighty whale breeding grounds” (so eloquently named by ZargonX). But if you mean the Saltpeter, Coal and Uranium that fortuitously appeared in my captured territory at various stages, then yes. Otherwise, no.


Other Comments

Resource distribution – no post-game analysis would be complete here without considering this issue! Like others, I’ve followed the Dominae/nbarclay disagreement with interest and I appreciate the arguments on both sides.

In my opinion, one of the great features of this game is the variability of available strategies. These strategies are applied within a certain contextual framework that includes some well defined and standard variables that may vary in accordance with difficulty only for example, some constants such as attack/defence values, and some other more random variables such as combat rolls and map generation (some being random, some being random within fixed constraints).

Maintaining a predetermined mind-set based on prior experience will tend to lead to the repeated use of the same or similar strategies. Being put in a position of doubt where you’re not sure what to expect next will put you more on your toes and require you to be more flexible with your strategy, being prepared to make amendments when needed. In this particular case, the scarcity and lack of domestic availability of key resources such as Coal, Rubber and Aluminium forced me to put various plans on hold and prepare mini-strategies. While immensely annoying and frustrating to say the least, in the end it gave me a greater sense of accomplishment to win the game. I was constantly having to prepare secondary invasion forces, maintaining higher military and naval levels than I otherwise would as I needed to be in several places at the same time. This obviously impacts commerce, research, and building production.

For me, resource scarcity is not really an issue. The resources are there and if you want them you have to be a little lucky, otherwise trade or fight for them. If you can’t trade for them, and you won’t fight for them because you have a different strategy, then sorry but you lose. I don’t believe that the game should allow us to “outsmart” it by having a better than average chance of guessing where the resources are. Besides which, using our game experience to play the odds on resource locations is unfair to the AI who is playing the game for the first time every time (hmm, stuck my jaw out there didn’t I?). A fixed strategy won’t always work. Broad strategies and objectives can be defined in advance, but must be revisited and fine-tuned in accordance with your own circumstances and the state of the world around you. That’s quite realistic IMHO. I enjoyed the challenge.

Corruption – for some reason I found corruption to be less of a problem than normal. Maybe it’s to do with map size or the proximity of the various islands to each other, but I managed to get some quite useful production from the former Sumerian island which housed neither my capital nor my FP. In fact, Sumer was my greatest research contributor at game end (with no Copernicus, Newton or SETI).


I was also blown away by the games of some of the more experienced players – nbarclay with his 1555AD SS victory nearly an age ahead of the AI, whoa! Bow bow, scrape scrape! Also Lockstep’s start-to-finish Cultural victory and Catt’s early Diplomatic victory, Rhothaerill, Alexman to name a few. I’m just glad my internet connection is too slow for MP!

More comments on the AU Mods to follow......

[Aqualung71]

Specific Comments on AU Mod – based on changes listed in Alexman’s topped thread

Effect of the tech tree change – the cutting of the link from Electronics to Motorised Transportation had no impact whatsoever on my research strategy. I still bee-lined for the ToE/Hoovers wonder builds, aided by an SGL from Scientific Method that gave me ToE instantly. But the way I achieved that strategy certainly did change, for reasons explained next:

Effect of unit changes – the major changes for me were the downgrading of Cavalry from 6 to 5 attack, and the beefing up of Infantry from 6 to 8 attack. The increased attack value of Guerillas was also useful (to the extent that I actually built some whereas I usually don’t – but this was resource driven also), though not game-defining. No other unit changes had much of an impact.

These two changes had an overwhelming impact on the way I fought wars and in one significant instance, on my tech research choices.

Not having a domestic source of Saltpeter contributed somewhat, but Cavalry at only 5 attack did not make them significantly enough more powerful than Knights to bother with, despite the better movement rate. This of course is impacted by the closeness of Replaceable Parts to Nationalism in the tech tree (ie, Knights are effectively out of the game once Riflemen appear, but then Infantry are fairly close so a reduced attack Cavalry has less utility). Indirectly this also increased the attractiveness of Crusaders (and conversely, dangerous in AI hands), although it’s hard to get more than 10 or 15 of them before the KT becomes obsolete.

The improvement in the Infantry attack value made a huge difference to my military strategy and also impacted my research strategy. I now found myself desperate for a Rubber source and that was probably the most important resource in the game for me in the context of the state of the world at the time it appeared (Edit: except for Coal of course, which is truly a "must-have"). I was prepared to land right on the Egyptian continent and start a war for it with Medieval units (as opposed to later resource raids on lightly defended outlying islands, which were no-brainers). Without Rubber, Guerilla’s were an ok security alternative, but were never going to mount a large-scale invasion.

As a result, I fought extensively with Infantry Armies, although the length of my build-up brought Tanks fairly soon thereafter which took over for the remainder of the Sumerian/Hittite conquest and then made mince-meat of the Dutch. Modern Armour just never made it into the game, which again is unusual. For some reason I found myself with a bunch of TOW from upgrades later on, which are quite handy units as they are good defenders and reasonable attackers. I’ve never really used them much before.

From a research standpoint, I deviated from the ToE/Atomic Theory/Electronics strategy by taking Replaceable Parts instead of Electronics, partly due to the faster worker rate, but predominantly because I wanted Infantry as my strike force.

Balancing Airpower – didn’t seem to affect my game. Didn’t see a Helicopter and was still never going to build one. Lethal sea bombard is still a good thing IMHO – I lost a couple of healthy veteran Battleships to Bombers and it really ticked me off!

Improved effect of Entertainers – my game experience suggests (Edit: ie, unsupported unproven wild guess) that this may have been the greatest factor that allowed most AI civ’s to remain in Democracy for most of the Industrial/Modern eras. This effect should not be underestimated – in my game this possibly allowed the Dutch to become a KAI and be very competitive in tech right into the Modern age. If I hadn’t invaded and destroyed their core, they would have given me a real run for my money on the Space Ship build, due to them being one or two techs ahead at the time it started.

Colosseum – didn’t have much impact. Still only built a couple towards the end when happiness was an issue and could get them done in 2 turns.

Longevity move – brought this wonder into the game, so to that extent I would say it was effective.

Naval movement – overall a good limiting factor preventing Curraghs from entering ocean, but too map dependent to have any predictable consequences. In this case, sea lanes made it possible to find all inhabited continents reasonably early on. Perhaps a purely random generated map would have restricted this potential, and so I think this was a good change to reduce the huge advantage of the seafaring trait, but less effective on this specific map. Perhaps this highlights that the extent of the Seafaring advantage is significantly dependent on the map generator and hence randomness, which IMHO is not a good thing.

Cure for Cancer – still too late to be of any use at all.

Government support costs – for an entrenched Republic player like me this became a major annoyance quite early on, which I guess means it achieved it’s intention. It still did not motivate me to switch to Democracy however, as the potential 8 turns of Anarchy is just not digestible at that stage of the game, particularly with a more competitive AI. My overwhelming consideration now, as was succinctly pointed out by Catt on another thread and subjected to some good debate, is that a war-time Democracy runs a not insignificant risk of revolt irrespective of happiness management, due to the WW score. At the higher levels, this is untenable.

I think therefore that any further government tweaks should be aimed at:

• Improving alternative forms of government to give the player more choice than the linear Republic/Democracy decision (granted, some players stay in Monarchy for some time to avoid WW); and

• Indirectly increasing the likelihood of players opting for a Democracy by reducing the anarchy period to something more tempting. This should probably go hand-in-hand with a tweak to improve the Religious trait in some other way.

Statue of Zeus – even with increased cost and reduced hit-points this is a very attractive wonder. In my game the Japanese beat me to it because I delayed my invasion, which just made an invasion all the more necessary as I wanted the Ancient Cavalry. Period! Granted, the ease with which I was able to do this was map-related. I noted with interest that some players had some unusually high numbers of low-level Japanese units to deal with and for some reason I didn’t get nearly as many which made my invasion quite straightforward. But in any case, the Japanese were a basket-case in this game. If their island was bigger and better and they had reached Samurai, they could have made things very, very nasty for the human player, being so closely located.

Ground unit bombard – I didn’t build any Catapults or Trebuchets. Like other players, I used the bombard of the Dromons to good effect in the Japanese invasion so they weren’t necessary. Later on I used Artillery extensively – perhaps it’s this unit that is too strong.

Philosophy – didn’t affect my strategy or result, unless it being more expensive somehow allowed the AI to research it 2 turns before me (grumble, grumble).

Flavours – harder for me to comment on since I haven’t taken the time to read the rather scientific thread on AI research choices (pun fully intended!), so I’m not entirely sure of the effects. IIRC, the evidence from my game suggests that stronger AI’s tended to favour the Education branch rather than push for Gunpowder in the Middle Ages, and the Philosophy strategy was much more risky (ie, I lost!). I felt the AI still placed too much emphasis on Communism/Fascism/Espionage when the ToE/Hoover beeline is so important to the human player and Infantry has become an effective attacking unit. The early Industrial Age is often make or break time and AI deviation to these optional techs can make the human player’s job much easier. I doubt whether any player actually researched these techs, preferring to trade old techs to inferior AI civs when they finally got to that point. Make Communism/Fascism more attractive to human players though, and see how that affects research choices and overall tech status. Interestingly though, other players also experienced the complete lack of interest in researching Free Artistry, which also helped the AI to keep up with more vital techs.

However, IMHO there are 2 clear results:

• The flavours pushed each individual AI’s in somewhat different research directions on a number of occasions, which opened up greater trade opportunities all round. Remembering that this also benefits AI civs by being able to trade more with each other, the human player’s ability to take greater advantage of this is dependent on some other game factors, one of which was clearly the over-powered Seafaring trait. At the higher levels there is probably an argument to suggest that the AI gets more benefit (assuming full contact with all civs) from this increased trade ability because of the significant AI-AI trade discounts and that the human player is still often required to pay exorbitant prices.

• Something has prompted the AI to prefer Democracy. This may be partly due to the changed unit support costs (a Republic-leaning AI will be incentivised to move to Democracy, though a Communism/Fascism AI may not). But it may also be due to the happiness boost to entertainers.


Summary

Overall, the two most important factors for me in the Mod were:

• Resource distribution – this has been well debated. I quite liked it personally as it challenged my thinking.

• The AI’s preference for Democracy - In my game this was the single most overwhelming factor that allowed at least 2 AI’s to be competitive well into the Modern Age.

By way of example, I am attaching 2 screenshots below which show 2 Dutch cities that I investigated when I was considering my chances of snaring the Internet.

Have a look at the research level – 175 for Eindhoven (without Commercial Docks it seems, but with Lib/Uni/R.Lab and Newtons) and 145 for Amsterdam (with L/U/RL and no CD’s). By way of comparison, my highest research city at game end was 128 at 100%, with L/U/RL + CD and all coastal squares worked. Now if we could only get them to mine more and build more Factories/Plants, the human could be in real trouble! Note also the Taxmen in those Dutch cities instead of Entertainers. This must have had a compounding effect over time – perhaps the greater effect of Entertainers pushed them to Democracy, which in turn gave them greater commerce/science, more production (compared to other preferred government types), more money to rush happiness and science buildings, less need for Entertainers and surplus citizens put on Tax, allowing a higher research rate.

I think this was the most intereting and challenging thing to come out of the game and I hope others have some comments on this too.

[Aqualung71]

Follow-on Post: Research levels

Amesterdam

[Dominae]

Wow, nice analysis Thriller!

As for your game: I hereby award you the Purple Heart, for getting your capital nuked and coming back to win the game. What a story that makes!