A Mini-Tourney

[Catt]

Originally posted by Arrian
About your idea for the settings for another tourney... sure. I will say this, though: I've never played Emperor. Therefore, I very well could get my butt kicked.

I very much doubt that given your success at Monarch.

In any event . . . I haven't ever played Emperor either! I have played several games at Diety (ass-whooping twice, once I actually put up a good fight, but didn't win).

I'm fine with any settings and any civ and will do my best to play it within a reasonable time period this time around.

Catt

[Theseus]

I thought it would be interesting to play a little out of our safety zones... no Rel, no Ind, no early UU.

Especially cause these are fairly standard settings.

I think Sir Ralph is the only one who's played Germany much.

You make the call, Arrian.

[Alkis]

I will also participate if you want me. Your settings are ok with me.

I want to say something about culture. I saw that Sir Ralph didn't build any temples in the ancient age. I did the exact opposite, temple in every town and in many occasions temple before anything else.

Arrian,
I wanted to say this to you for a long time, you really don't belong to Monarch level. A player with your skill and knowledge can safely play on Emperor.

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[Alkis]

Catt,
I had a look at your saves and it was fun

I really can't believe that you despise special tiles so much, the wheat and two grassland shield tiles to the right of your capital, the whale at the SW and also the cow near Nara

Anyway, I thought I put my cities a little far away from each other but you beat me to that.

As I said in my post I didn't kill the Americans but attacked the Indians instead. The other civs were more or less the same in my game. I think you were lucky that the English build that town on the uninhabited continent, you made contact with them too easily.

In any case it was fun to see your saves. It's only a guess but I think you play very well tactically. I saw how you position your troops, that was very helpful.

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[nbarclay]

830 AD

I'd enjoy playing in the new mini-tourney after I finish this one. Right now it's 830 AD and my galleons just discovered the other continent. I'm toward the end of my golden age, and I'm halfway through researching Metallurgy on my way to Military Tradition. (I got Magnetism first because I wanted some time to find my targets and get my forces concentrated on the correct end of my continent.)

Earlier, I actually started my golden age shortly before attacking India by using a samurai in my assault on America's new city. Then I attacked India with samurai in the north and in their western spice city at the same time, and followed up with some older units in the south and then some samurai reinforcements. They fell quickly enough, and I switched over to building banks and universities in my core when I saw how easy victory would be (with spearmen and swordsmen as their best forces). The war ended when all India had left was four size one cities on the northern island; I got two of those in peace negotiations rather than waste my time building settlers of my own. But the peace ended early when Delhi flipped. If India is stupid enough to insult me in such a manner, they deserve to die! Now I'm about to take their new capital (if all goes well) and then head north for their final city. (Yes, Delhi is mine again.)

I actually have a four-tech lead over China, which has a one-tech edge on England. That should give me a while for my cavalry to reign supreme before riflemen show up to spoil things, and if I can take out England, wheeling north and taking the rest of the other continent should be fairly easy. (Or I may even take on China after England if they're too slow moving toward Nationalism.)

By the way, England has the Great Lighthouse and China the Great Wall, so both of them have already had their golden ages. That's one possible nuisance I won't have to worry about. Between them, England and China have all the great wonders built thus far except for the Oracle (Zulus) and the Sistine Chapel (me). None of the optional advances that offer access to wonders have been discovered yet, so I'll be interested to see whether the AIs beeline for the end of the middle ages or buy my cavalry some extra time by researching some of those.

There's one other oddity in this game thus far. None of the AIs have Chivalry yet, so China doesn't have any of its infamous (and annoying) riders for me to have to worry about; at least not yet.

Nathan

[Catt]

Originally posted by Alkis
I really can't believe that you despise special tiles so much, the wheat and two grassland shield tiles to the right of your capital, the whale at the SW and also the cow near Nara

Yeah. I actually settled the wheat & 2 shields area towards the end of the game (when I no longer really needed to) -- it was one of those things that I meant to do early, forgot about, and didn't notice again for a long time. The cow was just a slip of the finger -- built one city in the wrong tile and didn't want to abandon and relocate (I try to make it a practice to only reload if I can do so without changing one of my own moves at all or otherwise affecting the game in some fashion and if something very interesting happens on a turn that I want to save for posterity -- I will then reload from auto-save, save it properly, and play it out without changes, so I have a "photo" of the event but haven't "corrected" any mistakes). I pretty much ignored the whale in favor of culturally claiming the whole southern tip below Kyoto.

I frequently (too frequently) build a city where a cow or wheat won't be available until the first border expansion, even when I know that expansion may be some time away -- too focused on a "spread" look to the empire. I will generally be a little more focused on the bonus tiles in most of my games, but I have never had a start like Kyoto (on a river with 3 wheats in the initial radius!) and it was actually a bit of a micromanagement challenge -- as I think I mentioned in my spoiler, I was popping settlers and workers as much to control happiness as because they were needed. All this combined with my perceptions of needing to REX the western half of the continent before some galleys showed up ('cause I didn't know how far the other continents were), I ended up placing cities pretty early with an eye to culutral border expansion to cover maximum territory rather than placing them in the most productive tiles -- this tactic has bitten me in the ass before!

Anyway, I thought I put my cities a little far away from each other but you beat me to that.

Again, yeah . I am aware of the strengths of a denser build, but I really like the view of a developed continent with "optimally" spaced cities (optimally meaning no overlap as opposed to most productive). I bend from true "optimally placed cities" for riverside, coastside, etc. builds. And on my few tries at Diety, I built cities no more than three tiles apart .

As I said in my post I didn't kill the Americans but attacked the Indians instead. The other civs were more or less the same in my game. I think you were lucky that the English build that town on the uninhabited continent, you made contact with them too easily.

Actually, my contact came from a galley off my westernmost coast (from the east coast of England). I didn't capture that distant city from America until well after I had met the English galley. But it certainly was a stroke of luck to be the first civ that England found -- certainly enriched my coffers selling maps and contact to each of India and America, as well as China, Rome and Zululand .

It's really interesting that you didn't go after the Americans but still managed to coast to a pretty easy win -- I tend to share your views of overseas conquest (seeing them more as resource colonies than true cities, which is to say build some culture for borders, but don't ever worry about production, corruption, etc.), but I do make sure that I have as much land as my Palace and FP can make productive. In this particular game, I decided to eliminate the Americans as much for (1) defensive reasons (I didn't want a later, stronger civ with an RoP with Abe to use any territory on "my" continent as a staging ground for an invasion) as for (2) pure aesthetics -- the continent just seemed it would look so much better in green than a mix of green with baby blue .

Thanks for taking the time to look at the saved games and then sharing your thoughts. I haven't played any of the GOTM or tournaments before (but have really enjoyed reading Zachriel's and Sulla's recaps of their games on that "other" forum site), and I am surprised at how much fun it was to play the same game as others and then compare notes. Must do it again.

Theseus, bring on that Emperor out-of-comfort-zone game.

Catt

[Alkis]

Catt,
I builded two cities, one on the SW and one on the SE of Kyoto, not too many overlapping tiles. These two cities grew to size 15 and they were just fine. I must tell you that I am proud at how I placed my cities. Here's a zip file of my saves if you wonna take a look.

In the end America attacked me again, so it wasn't peaceful after all. I didn't take any of their cities though. I just razed a few and pillaged their terrain to death. In the end Washington had absolutely no improvements left around it.

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[Alkis]

And these...

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[Theseus]

BTW, I went back and checked out China's start versus everyone else's... almost as good as Japan.

[Harovan]

If "no Rel no Ind no Early UU" it must be Germany (Persia doesn't meet that in 2 points). I would support it too. It's not far apart from playing Japan, though. Guess the biggest difference is being not Religious. 60-shields-temples, anyone?

[Theseus]

OK, here it is.

(Sorry Arrian, didn't want to wait.)

I played a little just to make sure it's interesting... it is.

Germany
Standard
Continents
70% Water
Wet
Temperate
3B
7 AI civs

Anybody who wants to play, jump in... but no spoilers for a while, and again, the object is not so much score as to compare notes on strategies, observations about the AI, etc.

Have fun!!

[nbarclay]

I've finished now. I played too late into the night last night and actually forgot where I was in the research tree, skipping past Military Tradition and forgetting to go back and pick it up right away. Worse, the situation was masked for a while by my not having saltpeter hooked up. So by the time I finally got ready to build cavalry, I had a truly huge number of samurai waiting to be upgraded.

That, plus trading tech to China to get luxuries to fuel We Love the Shogun Day throughout my home continent, let China get Nationalism too soon for me to attack them. But no matter, I still had three other targets.

From there, it was a classic demonstration of what overwhelming numbers of cavalry can do to enemies whose best defenses are musketmen and a handful of cavalry. My initial landing in England consisted of two forces, each containing one infantry (originally a spearman), three elite samurai for additional defense, and fifteen veteran cavalry. Then my galleons went back home for another full load of cavalry. In the meantime, an expanding rail network at home was continually speeding up my cavalry production.

The odd thing was that by the time the war with England was over, the Zulus had almost caught up with China in technology. Zululand had been attacking England from the north while I went in from the south (although the Zulus hadn't captured any cities), so I assume they got a golden age fighting the English. I even met up with one conscript rifle unit during the Zulu war, which did a little damage before it died. Rome, my last victim, was easy prey, although a slip of the mouse left me one cavalry short of taking their last city before I won.

The victory came in 1240 AD, with a score of 5398. It's the first time I've ever finished over 5000.

By the way, I got two great leaders on the next to last turn I played before winning. One moved my palace to the new continent, a pointless gesture from a gameplay perspective with the game all but over but meaningful to me in that I'd had such a move in mind from the time I picked a location for my Forbidden Palace. Earlier, I'd built Universal Suffrage with a leader - a total of five in the game but two of them too late to really matter.

In case anyone's interested, I'm enclosing a zip file with three saves - my landing in India, a save right after I discovered the other continent, and a save just before I hit return the last turn before I won. I have a couple others, but these are the interesting ones. If anyone wants a more detailed account of my invasion of the AI continent, I have a log, but it's bacically a classic cavalry blitz with overwhelming force against a technologically inferior enemy.

Nathan

[Txurce]

Guys, I just read the entire thread. My eyes are bleary, but it was a lot of fun. The great starting position led to less-than-typical starts, especially by Sir Ralph, but I most enjoyed the experimentation that all of you engaged in. This seems very much in keeping with the purpose of the tourney: to learn and have fun sharing strategies.

Now that I have the v. 1.21 (albeit beta), I am feverishly reading the CivFanatics Mac section to see how I can open one of your files in the future.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Theseus
I played a little just to make sure it's interesting... it is.
...
Have fun!!

Seconded. Veeery interesting. And fun!

[Catt]

I will download today.

I recommend a new thread for spoilers -- and clearly marked as spoilers!

Alkis, I will have a look at your downloads today.

nbarclay, glad you played -- a very interesting game from the sounds of it.

Txurce -- does this mean you can play a sav file created on a PC? Would love to have you in playing on this.

Catt