Au 201 spolier thread

[DaveMcW]

Mao has perfected the art of great leader farming. As soon as a wonder is rushed in shanghai, a dozen elite riders go berserk on anything that moves. If they fail to create a leader they go berserk on anything that doesn't move. But as soon as the leader is created, everyone retreats back into the nearest town and the only fighting is veterans picking off trespassers.

The last GL farm (er, neighbor) on the southern continent is destroyed in 520 AD. Mao decides to be more conservative on the northern continent. After all, neighbors are a non-renewable resource.

The leader and wonder tech rate have remained roughly equal, only 2 wonders were built the hard way since 210 BC and only 3 armies were created because of surplus leaders. Leader count is up to 17 at 1000 AD.

Nathan, I'll race you to that cultural victory.

[DaveMcW]

1060 AD - Our people want to build the Iron Works! Perhaps we should...

I had left the iron next to shanghai disconnected to prevent it from running away. I figured a 50% chance of getting the iron works, since it had half of the original position's squares. But with TWO coals, there was no possible way to lose the iron works no matter where you moved!

[Chemical Ollie]

Look at this stupid blackmail! They still don't know were my continent is!

After I got galleons and cavallery, I sent an invasion force and established a bridgehead. I razed Persepolis with Oracle and all to avoid flips of my newly conquered luxury cities in southern Persia. Their new capitol is far north.

[DaveMcW]

1580 AD - 20k culture victory, two turns away from genetics.

[aaglo]

How many great wonders in one city have you managed to build without the help of great leaders?

Mine is propably 6 wonders...

[Chemical Ollie]

I suppose you Americans quit this game to try PtW, as there are very few AA reports. I did not have that much time to play, but I'm making progress. It feels like I am now in the position of ultimate power despite the unlucky hut in the start. The year is 1700 and I'm researching radio. All lux and resuorces are within my territory. I made MPP with Russians and Greeks to stop them from fraternise with the Persians. They are now polite to me. I hold perhaps 50 % of the Persian continent. I made peace to increase happiness. I do not need more land to do what I want anyway. They just discovered nationalism, while the Russians and Greeks are only 3-4 techs behind me. I'm researching at 4 turns with 100's of gold surplus. 100% of my ciites are celebrationg without any lux from the slider.

It feels like there will be a lot of space-clicking until I laucnh my spaceship, if nothing unexpected happens. But normally it does. Those AIs are real backstabbers

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Olaf HÃ¥rfagre
I suppose you Americans quit this game to try PtW, as there are very few AA reports.

In my case, I put the game on "indefinite hold" when it became clear that I'd get a cultural victory around 1500 AD, probably a little before. It's not in me to play without micromanaging, but all the "build and disband," rush buying, and tile improvements were taking a fair amount of time for each turn. And I still had probably a little over 40 turns to go before I reached the formality of being declared the victor.

Nathan

[Arrian]

I played a bit more on Friday. I launched the invasion of Germany.

I upgraded my horsemen & war chariots to knights and my galleys to caravels. I scraped together 10 caravels, loaded them up, and sent them off, and am now in th process of ferrying the extra units across. The Gem isle and a southern German city with incense (I think it was incense) fell immediately. I then slowly marched north while beelining for Military Tradition. I captured Berlin with Cavalry and am poised to crush Germany pretty quickly now.

Rome has been my "ally" despite apparently not doing anything. Good, their GA will be blown, and I will be able to gut them next, utilizing the Persians as "allies."

On the wonder front, I lost Sun Tzu to the Iroquois, but I hardly care. I now have the Pyramids (Berlin).

It's been tough to motivate to play this one out, because victory is inevitable, but my game hasn't turned out to be spectacular in any way.

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Having reached UP relatively early, I didn;t see the point in playing it out... limited time, and PTW experiments.

I highly recommend 201 as exercise in KICKING AI BUTT!

[aaglo]

DaveMcW-

Could you send a screenshot from the city wiev of that Shanghai?

[DaveMcW]

Sure.

[Chemical Ollie]

Finally!

I was bored, so I attacked the Persians as soon as I got MA. Took their mainland in 5 turns. Russia joined their side, so I took their mainland too.Took a little longer but no big deal. I didn't even have to leave Democracy or adjust the lux slider. Then finally I launched a spaceship in 1870 something. First space win in a year. I had even forgot that there is a launch movie, so I thought the game chrashed on me when the screen turned white.

I must have been on the edge of triggering domination win. First time I win on emperor level in other means than culture, but only because I turned cultural win off. I must have had about 150 000 cultural points at the end. My score was 6670, my best score ever in a long game. 2700 BC wins on tiny maps should not count.

I tried Diety OCC twice on this map but that was not as easy... Missed the GL with just a few turns in both games.

[Chemical Ollie]

I tried this map on Chieftain, actually my first CIV3 chieftain game ever. My tribe was the Chinese.

How ridicoulous the AI is on chieftain - When I had 5 cities, most of them had only one. I conquered my home continent in 50 AD and the rest of the world in 700 AD. Of course it was kinda cheaty as I knew the map, but anyway -


I did not build cities over the whole home continent and razed everything from the others. I didn't need more. 4 horsemen could annihilate a whole tribe in 1-2 turns. The romans where the hardest, but they fell to my hordes too.

The score was pathetic 1600. At least the scoring system has some decency in it.

[DeepO]

Well... this is the first AU I play, as I have been busy with other things. And, it maybe wasn't the best to start with, as UP is in most of my games the goal, and this one was simply too easy when you know what to do. I played it as Egypt, on Emperor, and won it in 2 ways too (but more on that later, as it certainly was not my intention).

The starting position simply rocked, and was even a bit too much... there are more games in which I outREX the AI, but here it simply was too Rexy for my taste. Seeing the great position, I decided that I wouldn't build 4 cities before the first archer rush as normal, but would go for all available space... this turned out to be 8 cities (next one on my continent had 5).

As I saw some more cows looming, I initially build 1 warrior, and right after that a temple. (no further scouts needed) I too popped barbarians in the hut, but somehow my warrior survived (the hut was popped by a border expansion, and my warrior was just in time back to get fortified in Thebes) Then came a settler, another warrior (for defense this time), and another settler. By this time I researched WC, so started to alternate between barracks, settlers, and archers in all my cities. I was going for the Colossus (the pyramids and oracle weren't possible, I knew that), but lost it with only 2 turns on the counter So I switched back to a palace prebuild, and prepared for war.

By 730 BC, I had 8 cities running, all had produced archers for a while, and were recently switched to WCs. I started the first attack, against England (5 cities). I just built the GL in Thebes, so there was no reason to be generous to England; I took their 5 cities with my 15 archers at a steady pace of 1 city per turn (autorazing 2 cities).

Meanwhile, the war chariots were massing on the borders of India, so when my archer horde had rested and joined them in 510 BC, I started warring on India. In 490 BC, the first 3 cities fell, quickly joined by Bombay in 470 BC. I realized my archers were holding me back, so they were assigned to the new cities to crunch the resistance (aided with a few pop-rushes of spears, as my defense was mostly destroyed by the Indians who clearly had seen the attack coming). On the English side, my territory was completed with some settlers I built to avoid overgrowth of my cities.

Bombay was overcrowded with Indians, and I had too few population to further grow, so I added my workers (after building roads to the front, of course) to Bombay, and rushed a settler (It has been a while that I pop-rushed settlers, but the game was simply going too fast!). In all, both India and England (and most of the other continental civs) had too many workers and settlers, I simply couldn't use them all. So I added all my workers, and about half of the slaves to cities, to support further production). One of the cities that was beefed like that was Abydos, exactly in the middle of the continent, who got a pop-rushed temple and courthouse, and started on the FP. It was not going to get into WLTKD for another 20 turns because of the rushing, but it wasn't fully corrupt, and once those 20 turns ended it was producing 8 shining shields... not that bad for a hand built FP.

Research was going much too slow for my taste, so instead of being on 20% lux, 80% tax, I switched to full research, and quickly reached monarchy. I started on the hanging gardens, built the HE, the lighthouse (rushed with an extra leader), and every other wonder from now on.

The rest of India quickly fell, with one exception, they managed to build a city in between the Babylonians and Americans, which was surrounded with jungle; so I couldn't reach it with my WCs. I had to wait a little, which also led to a culture flip of Calcutta (undefended). So to not get bored, I attacked the French, from 290 BC to 190 BC.

At this point, I realized that my initial goal of securing my continent in the BCs wasn't going to work, my troops suffered too much from the ongoing wars. I decided to build up again, start on marketplaces and aquaducts everywhere, and in 10 AD the first Bab city fell. They put up quite a fight, and my WCs were getting tired, as they retreated from too many battles (okay, I didn't lose them so quickly, that was a plus). Finally, in 290 AD I conquered them, took the last Indian city, rushed Sun Tsu in Babylon, and moved all my WCs close to the American border, waiting to get upgraded to knights. In the mean time, I had found the northern continent, and was looking how to conquer those civs too...

330 AD - 360 AD: the Americans fell to my knights, but they left the continent in a few galleys. I made peace, and started moving troops to the gem island, and to the Persian territory at the same moment they were being slaughtered by the Roman legions. I moved 3 settlers there, with only a few knights as protection, and was ferrying all I had across, but before I was able to build my first city in the razed Persian territory, the Romans asked for 46 gold... I wasn't fully ready, and made a little mistake: I should have given in to that extortion, waiting until my troops on the continent were a bit better armed, but was too proud for that... so they declared war.

520 AD: the first 2 Roman cities fell (one on the gem island, the other Persepolis). I scrambled to protect Persepolis, but the legionairs in the final days of their golden age were hard on my knights, and most of my continent was in builder mode, not warring mode. Anyway... the war dragged on, provided me with some 5 leaders, and finally ended in 1150 AD. I did manage to move my capital in the middle of the northern continent, and had access to all 8 luxs at this time. Around the same time, the cavalry came to my rescue, and I was ready to take on the Germans.

However, I didn't want a long spun out war again, so I waited a little... plus I spotted a nice little island off the coast of the Iroquois nation which I set my mind on (not because there was anything useful there, but I thought it was a nice island to drop my settlers on). But, by the time my Galleons could land 4 settlers there, the Germans were there too, and of course they build a city just one turn before I could position myself. So off went another shipment of 4 cavs to teach those a lesson.

Meanwhile, I was speeding ahead in research, keeping a 20% lux to get most of my cities in WLTKD, switched to republic, and build all wonders I could think of on my home turf. I feared that Thebes was getting too corrupted to have a lot of use out of the IW that was going to get built there, but it was still okay, only lost about 20% under republic.

1265 AD, I had positioned enough cavs, so I started my German conquest, which was rather uneventful except of one glitch: I left a city undefended within reach of their knights. Ah well, I took it back one turn later It went on until 1315 AD, at which time I controlled the two main continents, and all smaller islands except those of the coast of Russia and Greece that could be reached by galley.

So, I won. I put a few cavs in 2 galleons, and shipped those over to Greece (who were down to 2 cities), and thought whether to go for a domination victory or not (it was obvious that I was quite close). The Greeks had no pikes yet, and the whole continent was backward (Iroquois were closest, but hadn't got education yet). But, this was a learning game, and so far I hadn't learned much, except that great starts don't always bring great games. Before landing my troops in Greece, I decided that I wanted a space victory, and that the learning for me was going to come from getting a good score, and to avoid a cultural win while going for AC. I retreated my galleons from the Aegian Sea, and started building as a madman, especially going for research buildings.

This was the first time I destroyed cultural buildings that were older then 1000 years, to avoid too much culture, and a quick calculation made sure that I needed to, or I would lose to a cultural victory. My lux rate had been on 20% throughout the game (only dropping to 10% once because I needed a tech in 4 turns), so I knew my citizens were a happy bunch, and I could most likely forget about temples all together. So, I destroyed all of them, making sure that in my queues, cathedrals were present, as I was going to need the 6 happy faces they provided later on. (if you destroy a temple at the time you are building, or have queued a cathedral, the cathedral will build normally). I wasn't very focused on culture in this game so far, which was good, as otherwise I would have to refrain from building universities everywhere, or I would trigger culture anyway.

So... I was happily building my empire, when a border expansion gave the first trouble: I was sure that I had all land squares already, but domination triggered in 1390 AD (score: 8426 points). I cursed, and reloaded. I had missed something... oh well, I gave 2 1-city islands to the Greeks, and played on. They got iron and oil, but who cares, it was not that they were going to use it to conquer me, besides, they still had no knights, and I was in the modern era already.

1535 AD... again I won by domination! This time I was sure, there had been border expansions, but no new land came into my hands.... it took a while until I realized the other part of the domination condition: you need 2/3 of the land, and 2/3 of the coast as well... I had too much land, but the border expansions were giving me more coast too, which triggered victory. So, I went back, gave another 1 city island to the Russians, and went on. All went well until 1555 AD, at which time I won again. Sigh. I gave my last 1 city island away to the Greeks (I was tempted to give it to the Americans, who were still floating around in their lonely galley off my southern coast), and hope that by now I was under 2/3 of the coastal area too. I know there is a tool somewhere that lets you calculate how far off you are from domination, but I was too lazy to find it, and had to pay the prize.

1685 AD: my space ship leaves. Not my best space victory (which will require some AI resistance so that tech is speeded up), but quite a decent score: 9589. And I did learn something too: my culture was only 85267, which is even a little higher as the last few turns I didn't bother with rebuilding everything. Plus, almost all my cities were in WLTKD, so that was fine as well

I could have gotten a better score out of it, as I could have waited roughly another 25 turns before culture would trigger, but I was a bit too lazy. My hat is off to those score hunters, who can wait until 2050 before ending, this really is too much for my tastes. It looks like a score of 20K is quite possible here on Emperor (certainly when you know the land), if you are willing to commit yourself to it. I am tempted to try it again, but then under deity (and not for score), I wonder if I could get UP on deity on this map.

DeepO

[ducki]

Originally posted by Aeson
You should still be able to build the Iron Works when the time comes. Even though the resource moves away, the city is still flagged as being available to build it.

If this has been confirmed already, forgive me, but I just wanted to point out that I know you can complete the IW if you start it before the resource disappears, as I've done that before.

It seems that the "Build" availability is just for starting a unit/wonder/improvement, not for completion.

I know this doesn't answer all questions about it, but maybe it helps with part.