AU 106 Spoilers

[Dominae]

Killerdaffy, I got Pyramids too, and worked every tile pretty fast. However, I only had 9 cities. I think that can make a big difference. Also, I'm out of Civ-pratice, so I'm pretty sure you did some things are lot more efficiently than I did.

In any case a 920AD contact date is quite impressive. Good work!


Dominae

[Killerdaffy]

Originally posted by Dominae
In any case a 920AD contact date is quite impressive. Good work!

Oops, I'm already inspiring legends!! It was 960AD for Greeks and English, I still haven't discovered Egypt in the screen shot above (1020AD). They were just too far away and nobody else had navigation yet.

[De Gaulle]

Unusual strategy and big payoff!

Settings: Persia, Monarch, standard bic.

I am a big fan of these AU games where I always learn about some interesting strategies... and how I could have done much better in my own game...

But for once I seem to have followed a unique approach, which might sound counterintuitive to most: I chose to NOT contact most of the AIs upon being the first to discover Navigation.

The rationale: achieving the largest tech lead possible by denying the AIs the research "boost" coming from knowing a civ which has a particular tech.

Quick overview of the game:
1) Built 17 cities on the island, aiming for covering the largest amount of coast possible for maximum trade (research) and working every tile ASAP.
2) No waste of money: minimal troops, no barracks until Sun Tzu and Navigation.
3) Beelined for: GL, then Republic, Construction, Currency, Monarchy.
4) Built Colossus for extra trade and then GL, hoping for free techs later on (as everybody else).

I started suspecting something was strange (I expected to fall waaaayyyyyy behind) when I was able to pick up the HG easily. It triggered my GA and I spent the next 20 turns mopping up techs at 4/turn with a 250gpt positive cash flow.

Middle Ages:
1) Went for Sistine Chapel immediately.
2) Took the southern route to Military Tradition (with negative cash flow) to avoid Education and to be able to conquer additional territory from my closest neighbor asap.

Tried for Sun Tzu and Leonardo half-heartedly and got them!

At that point I realized that I shouldn't wait for somebody to discover me... I beelined for Navigation and made contact around 1250AD with the English. Their spearmen defending their cities plus the occasional pikeman were not an issue for the 15 cavs I sent over.
Upon contacting the Greeks I was shocked to see how far behind they were (6-8 techs). I remembered a forum discussion mentionning the tech cost decrease obtained by simply knowing a civ with the tech and I tried to increase my lead to the maximum by denying contact/trade to the AIs.

It is 1405AD, the greeks have just sent their first caravels and made contact with the egyptians, which in turn contacted me.

The greeks being the first to poseess Navigation, it is fair to assume they are likely the most advanced AI civ. But racing ahead allowed me to be ELEVEN techs ahead of them (screenshot): Printing Press, Economics, Chemistry, Physics, Theory of Gravity, Magnetism, Metallurgy, Military Tradition, Nationalism, Steam Power and Industrialization.

SO.... My question is:
Is Monarch just so easy (I usually play regent) compared to Emperor/Deity or can it actually be useful to maintain an isolationist stance if you think you are ahead?

[De Gaulle]

OK, here is the screenshot...

[De Gaulle]

And the Top5 cities with the minimap of the time.
Sorry for the multiple posts, I don't know how to paste several screenshots at once...

[nbarclay]

Re: Unusual strategy and big payoff!

Originally posted by De Gaulle
SO.... My question is:
Is Monarch just so easy (I usually play regent) compared to Emperor/Deity or can it actually be useful to maintain an isolationist stance if you think you are ahead?

A lot depends on the situation. If you have contact, you can gain from trades with seven or so other civs (depending on how many die before you meet them) while each AI only gains from having one additional trading partner. Depending on how much advantage you can get out of your trade deals, that may or may not offset the advantage the AIs get from your already knowing the tech they're researching. (One of the neat things about this game set-up is that you can get high "only one other civ knows it" prices for the same tech from two or three different civs - if they can afford to pay.)

Philosophically, I have a fairly strong preference for maximizing my own nation's prosperity rather than hamstringing myself in the hope that in the process, I'll hamstring my rivals even more. So my favorite deals to make are tech-for-luxury deals, hopefully pursuading the AIs to throw in some gold as well. That gives me WLT?D empire-wide, lots of happy cities to boost my score, and some trade income to help speed up my next research.

I went for contact as quickly as I could (England in 810 AD and all civs contacted around 960, and that without using up my golden age) but I certainly haven't assisted any of the AIs in contacting each other. That lets me trade with the AIs while still preserving the advantages of the AIs' difficulty in trading with each other, so I can still maintian a large and growing technological lead. And entering the industrial age in 1190 AD on this map - thanks in part to trading for Feudalism, which I'd deliberately delayed researching in the hope that I could trade for it - is nothing to sneeze at.

Nathan

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Killerdaffy

Olaf,

350BC for Republic is very good. Did you beeline for Republic or get Literature (cheap libraries) first?

The only side-step from the early research path was Ceremonial Burial to get temples. I disabanded ALL military units and did not build any new until it was time to start shipping them offshore. Happiness was controlled by setting the lux slider to 30%, which could be reduced to 20% after building colosseums or cathedrals. I built Great Library just to deny it to the others and went straight for Navigation. I am now a few turns away from it in 850 AD.

[Jawa Jocky]

Re: Unusual strategy and big payoff!

Originally posted by De Gaulle

Is Monarch just so easy (I usually play regent) compared to Emperor/Deity

Monarchy is just that easy when your using the right strategies (like close city placement ) It looks like you need to say goodbye to the lower levels.

[vmxa1]

Monarch is not hard to win, but being way ahead in tech at that point is unusual. I would wonder if you had 8 civs and if they were some what isolated from each other. Normally I would expect the civs to have traded around and be ahead of me when I made contact. With no leaders, due to no contact, no wars, I would expect to have maybe 3 wonders, maybe 4. A super location for the capitol or 2nd city could allow you to do some great wonder making, along with an early GA, I could see doing even better. Lots of land masses with large amounts of water would slow them down.

[BillChin]

I abandon my Deity level game as Persia. I defeated the Germans, and am well on my way to conquering Japan, when the Greeks declare war in 1848. They have modern armor and mech infantry and no one else in the world does. I get everyone to ally against them. I make a mistake and Greek marines land and burn on of my best cities and I do not have the heart to continue.

It may be a winnable game or the Greeks may be far along on spaceship construction. They already have U. N., SETI and the Manhattan project. I am researching Radio.

Any invasion of the Greek continent requires mass naval and air support and masses of armies. A D-day style invasion of an advanced opponent might take 40 or 50 turns to prepare for. 40 or 50 turns of sluggish turns because of all the units and AI combat with little to look forward to until I am ready to invade. The initial landing beachhead might have dozens of Modern armor, a similar number of jet bombers and Mech infantry thrown at it.
- Bill

[Theseus]

Finished. 1918AD, 2785 points, diplowin.

Nothing great to report... My Cav Horde just steadily took down Greece (Alex is my bee-yatch!!), while I got into the tech lead in the industrial corridor. I took one pause in the attack, having taking control of the eastern horn, but in the next 'big push' I pressed through until I had full control of the continent; WW was just starting to become an issue, but I finished off the attack with only 3-4 turns at 40% luxuries. Alex, da fool, ended up with an OCC on the island south of "his" continent. I had two separate alliances with Toku against Alex... the Japanes never captured any cities, but they had a massive Frigate / Ironclad fleet, and they bombarded the CRAP outta western Greek territory.

(Note to newer players: it's been said before, but a reminder... overwhelming force, especially with Knights, Cavs, and Tanks, is basically unstoppable. I had 90+ Horsemen waiting for the Knight and Cav upgrades... unleashing them put Alex into Hades, even though he was the big dog up until that point.)

Other than me , the really impressive civ was France... not only did Joanie do a great job of taking control of all three islands, but she nabbed ALL medieval GWs except Bach, Leonardo, and Smith (which I got). I was tempted to divert the Cav Horde to France instead of Greece for the GWs, but I knew I could do a better FP / Palace layout locally.

The Iroquois should have done much better... early in the game, they had 9 towns to Japan's 6, and approximately equal quality land. Instead, they got wiped out. I hope that adding offensive units to build preferences in the AU Mod helps.

I wasn;t at war with anyone towards the end, so I just set up MPPs with all civs except Japan, who I knew would be the other UN contender... worked like a charm.

Biggest lesson learned: I should have pushed through Education to Navigation. Yeah, the GLib gambit worked out OK, but contact and Universities would have been better.

The second lesson was as I wiped out Alex from the western horn... I made it a real point to follow destruction and razing with immediate new towns. No way was I gonna let some @$@#$%$# AI civ drop off a settler or two and intrude on my new continent!

Only one screenshot that I liked; nothing special, but it put a smile on my face!

[De Gaulle]

Nathan: You are obviously right about taking the risk of harming yourself more than harming the AI in denying them contact/trade in most games. And this particular game is most likely the ONLY case where I think you can get away with it, and even benefit from it (at least temporarily). Let's trash this bad idea for good.
I just wanted to see how far ahead scientifically one could get by using (abusing?) the special features that this game provided. And it was the Science game after all...

Jawa: Thanks for the encouragement! I guess it is time to move up. Oh well, I'll have to get used to being the underdog again.

VMXA1: I also expected to be way behind... China was the only civ to get wiped out in the ancient age. As for the others, the Greeks seemed to be the first to master Navigation after me. I guess contact is just being made at the time of the screenshots.

My personnal guess about what worked so well for me to get all the wonders, bare pyramids and great wall, is a greater speed of scientific discovery. I think it was due first to the Colossus and all my coastal cities and then to my beelining for Literature. I immediately switched all my cities to building them. After that, the next wonders I got (HG and Sistine) enabled my towns to grow much larger than those of the AI, hence giving me the advantage for good. Any subsequent wonders (Leonardo, Sun Tzu, Bach, Copernicus and now Adam Smith) lowering further the fixed costs of my cities allowed me to really get ahead.

As for having super-production cities, well... I didn't really... That's why the wonders are in 4 cities (in the screenshot) with Adam Smith to be completed in the 5th one next turn.


On a general side, I would agree with a comment made before saying that the game was easier than normal. Certainly NOT because it wasn't setup properly (Thanks Vulture for doing a great job!) but because we humans altered dramatically our playstyle to take advantage of the specific features incorporated while the AIs did not...

[vmxa1]

It has been awhile since I played a sciene civ so maybe i will take one and do std Deity tomorrow. I do not expect to have all those wonders though (sigh).

[Theseus]

Re: Re: Unusual strategy and big payoff!

Originally posted by nbarclay
Philosophically, I have a fairly strong preference for maximizing my own nation's prosperity rather than hamstringing myself in the hope that in the process, I'll hamstring my rivals even more.

Lesson learned. The best games in this thread all followed said principle.

In fact, the more I think about it, pursuing the GLib strategy in this game was akin to simply buying techs... Cheap? Yes. Allowed a focus on other priorities? Yes.

"Break a cycle" and get ahead? No.


De Gaulle: You are more than ready. There is no spoon.

[nbarclay]

When I was talking about maximizing my own nation's prosperity rather than hamstringing both myself and my opponents, I was speaking entirely in terms of how I handle trade. The question of whether to place a bet that the AIs will out-research you, in which case the Great Library tactic is fantastic, or to bet that you can keep up with the AI in research, in which case going for Navigation quickly can be more useful, is an entirely different issue. As things worked out, no AI cluster had enough AIs with enough good land (and enough peace) to make up for the advantages in focus we human players had. But that could have gone differently.

And my policy of trading tech for luxuries is more a matter of philosophy than of cold calculation. I like to think I generally get enough benefit to make up for what the AIs get out of the deals, but I've never run the numbers to verify that. Much of my bias comes from a background pursuing quick space race victories (and, before that, quick Alien Life Project victories in CTP). And much is just a matter of the role-play aspect of the game: passing up an opportunity to make my people a lot happier just to stretch out an already large tech lead doesn't feel right for a leader who cares at all about his people.

Nathan