AU207: Big Planet - Strategy, Spoilers and Comments

[badams52]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth
Catt, is there a thread you know of off-hand that explains rushing principles better?

I knew how to "work it" in Civ2, but I sort of forgot, and never have done much thinking about it in Civ3.

Yahweh,

Don't know of a thread for working it, but the basic principals are easy.

I believe Catt gave you the best example for a pure rush when buying without using units. Same as civ 2. With no shields, the buyout is at it's highest. A worker has the least shields to buy thus only 80 gold. After that, all othet improvements price drops around 50% (so a factory starting at 1800 would drop to ~900 after rushing a worker first).

I don't know if a cascading rush is cheaper, i.e. rush worker, switch to settler, rush settler, switch to harbor, rush harbor, etc. But that would be easy for you to test out.

In civ (the original) I remember that military units cost more to rush than an equivalent shield costing city improvement. So if you wanted a tank, you'd rush a city improvement with equal value than switch to tank (which is why the 1/2 shield reduction for switching in civ 2 happened). Don't know if they changed this in civ 3 or not.

As you may recall from our earlier discussion, it's always cheaper to disband units if you have them.

Another favorite of mine is to disband one unit, then rush. The disbanded unit takes the edge off the full shield buy and leaves a cheaper cost for the rush.

Maybe others can fill in the other exploits/cheaper ways to rush.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by badams52
If this isn't what happened to Arrian, then disregard my post. If instead he captured cities after rushing the capitol, then that's just how the game is supposed to work in regards to rushing.

If that's how it's supposed to work, it's a case of poor design. Standard operating procedure, especially in the age of railroads, is to use a leader practically the moment he appears if you have a good use for him so you can get another leader later the same turn. With the current design, you have to choose from (1) delay using the leader, probably sacrificing some chance to get another one, (2) take a chance of essentially wasting the leader if he ends up not finishing the palace after all, or (3) go through a lot of pain counting cities and finding about the (undocumented) palace cost structure in order to find out whether you can rush the palace in mid-turn safely given your conquest plans for later in the turn. None of those options is particularly attractive.

Basically, the current cost structure offers a clear benefit only to extreme micromanagers (and then only in rare cases) while placing the vast majority of more casual players very much at risk.

[nbarclay]

The gold per shield is constant with the exception that if no shields are already in place when you start a rush, the cost is double. So setting to build a worker or warrior, rushing, and then switching and rushing the rest would be profitable, but a multi-layer variant of that trick would not produce any additional advantage.

Of course if you aren't in a huge hurry, the cheapest thing is to rush every other turn, thereby letting cities contribute at least one shield on their own. That way you don't have to worry about either disbanding units or wasting even the 40 gold that rushing a 10-shield unit before switching to something else at normal price costs.

Nathan

[badams52]

Originally posted by nbarclay
If that's how it's supposed to work, it's a case of poor design. Standard operating procedure, especially in the age of railroads, is to use a leader practically the moment he appears if you have a good use for him so you can get another leader later the same turn. With the current design, you have to choose from (1) delay using the leader, probably sacrificing some chance to get another one, (2) take a chance of essentially wasting the leader if he ends up not finishing the palace after all *snip*.

Good point, hadn't thought of that aspect of it. But usually when I have a leader in waiting to build something (such as a wonder that I don't have the tech for yet, or the leader is in transit), then I change my warfare style. The elite* and veterans attack while the elites just rest and wait. And maybe I'll net some more eiltes in the process. So while (1) is a vaild complaint, I don't think the delay of warring for 1 turn produces much of a problem.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by badams52
I don't know if a cascading rush is cheaper, i.e. rush worker, switch to settler, rush settler, switch to harbor, rush harbor, etc. But that would be easy for you to test out.

I'm not sure anymore if it was Civ 2 or SMAC (I think Civ2) but there it matter, in Civ3 it doesn't. In Civ2, the cost was doubled if you didn't had half of the shields yet, so if you need a large rush, you could rush several buildings which all had more then half of the shields present, and get from a worker to a factory at slightly over half the cost.

In Civ3, cost depends on having shields in the box or not, meaning that a cascaded rush is not needed for a "short rush": you just rush a worker first, and get to a factory immediately after that if you want to.

Further comments on rushing in Civ3: whatever shields you would gain in the turn you complete the building are lost. You also don't receive any excess gold. So, the most efficient use of cash is if you rush a slightly less expensive building a few turns before the target would complete, and get the last part the normal way by collecting shields.

This also works best to offset small differences in cost: if you have 12 shields left on a horseman you're producing, in a city which generates 5 shields, you can rush a spear for 8 gold (2 shields), and finish the horse in 2 turns, instead of 3. Doing so, you use a bit of cash to gain 3 shields that would otherwise be lost, so those 8 gold are in reality worth 5 shields instead of the 2 you pay for. A lot of micromanaging, but worth it.

DeepO

[Arrian]

I managed to play some more yesterday.

I'm now up to 1310AD. The Mongols have 2 island cities left, and I've started in on the Americans. I have ~65 Cavalry.

The problem now is that Japan finally started to beat the Americans. They've taken some cities, razed others, and I've seen THREE seperate 3xSamurai armies. And they have musketmen. Fighting them is going to be nasty. I expect heavy casualties. However, once I'm done with them, I won't need much of an army. Just enough to flatten Zululand, and *maybe* Scandanavia (pathetic island nation to the SW, horribly behind in tech).

I've met the rest of the world (or rather they met somebody on my continent and I got introduced), and managed to trade metallurgy for banking, economics, navigation, printing press, several hundred gold and ~100gpt. I used a leader to snag Smith's (I built Copernicus straight-up). So things are going pretty well.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Spoiler Alert

Yes, I know this is the spoilers thread, but if you haven't fought the Vikings yet and you think you probably will, the tale below could spoil a surprise. (For those playing the 1.29 version, the Vikings are the "lonesome" civ in the PtW version.)

---

My war with the Vikings was one of the craziest I've ever fought. I'd recently started building tanks, and the Vikings were still just about halfway through the medieval era, with most of their medieval techs being on the top part of the tree. (My trades of technology for incense, sometimes directly and on one occasion throwing in gold and then selling additional techs the same turn to get my gold back, had done them a huge amount of good since I'd discovered them mired in the ancient era.) So all I had to do was land a few elite cavalry and tanks with infantry to protect the landings and they'd collapse very quickly, right? Wrong.

My initial landings went fine, capturing two cities in the north and two in the south fairly quickly (using forces from four transports). But then huge swarms of horsemen, archers, spearmen, and even a few chariots started coming after me. I've seen stacks of doom before, but never one so primative.

Fortunately, the AI was completely incompetent in its use of those units. First the counterattackers moved in on Birka in south central Scandanavia, but then I reinforced that city and took Trondheim in the north, and the Viking troops turned around and headed north where I'd spread my defenses thinner. The completely stupid thing was that the troops moved past some tanks sitting on a hill out in the open, causing damage to a great many units before they could even attempt an attack.

I got in additional tanks for reinforcements, chewed through the uninjured units of the stack and some of the injured ones, and got a lot of promotions. Lots of units ended up in the city the Vikings had planned to attack, so they turned their units around and left my city radius! That gave my tanks another turn to chew up the slow-mover survivors.

The AI's next attempt to mount an offensive was back in the south, but it had lost the chance to get the weight of numbers necessary to stand a chance against superior technology. Wounded tanks in the north healed and additional reinforcements landed, shifting the balance very heavily in my favor. The total war only took about nine or ten turns, but it was a lot tougher than I ever would have expected against such a primitive opponent. If I'd gone in with no offensive units stronger than cavalry the way I'd originally thought I probably would, I could have been in serious trouble. Even as it was, war weariness was starting to become a problem (partly because I was a Democracy, although I did have Universal Suffrage to help out). Huge maps definitely make for higher unit counts, probably because corruption is so much lower that even when civs don't control more territory than they would on a standard map, they get a lot more wealth and production out of it.

The war did have its good side, though. About eight leaders appeared, helping me rush SETI, the Internet, Longevity (since the AIs took forever to research Sanitation for me), and the Intelligence Agency, as well as founding a few armies. And in addition to the ones that had generated leaders, a little over twenty-five other tanks also achieved elite status.

Nathan

[Arrian]

I definitely plan a similar invasion, Nathan. I'll bring a few more units than you did, I bet.

Currently, I'm up to 1420, and I'm fighting a vicious war against Japan. I do not know (nor to I wish to know) how many Cavalry I lost killing their 3 Samurai armies. Suffice it to say it's a big number. Japanese resistance, however, is weakening. I've taken six cities, most of which were formerly American, and am poised to strike into the Japanese homeland.

Mongolia, Germany and America have ceased to exist.

I'm still running a Monarchy, but that isn't hurting me much. I sucked it up and sold Steam Power to Korea (the only strong AI civ out there) for a staggering amount of GPT. Add in a couple of luxury sales and I'm milking their economy dry.

My Palace is finally where I wanted it all along. I'll try to provide some screenshots tonight.

The only minor irritation (besides the time it takes to conquer civs on a huge map) was the French grabbing Magellan's. Other than that, it's smooth sailing.

-Arrian

[badams52]

Originally posted by Arrian
Other than that, it's smooth sailing.

No pun intended

Looking forward to the warmonger's finishes (is it no wonder the game took longer for them? and this is why I refuse to play the huge map )

[Arrian]

Yeah, the turns are really slowing down now.

Once I have wiped out Japan, the Zulu, and the Vikings, I may just hunker down for the SS win. Then again, there are several other weak civs out there and they've got luxuries...

-Arrian

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

I've really enjoyed the AAR's so far. I'm surprised to see everyone's gotten so far. Then again it's been almost 2 weeks. Reading how all of you are progressing has made me really wanna pop my PtW disc back in the computer. I might even take another stab at 207. But I dunno about that. I've seen too many spoilers. Maybe 208 if it starts anytime soon.

Can't wait to read how the rest of the games end. Do you warmongers plan on invading the other continent or are you gonna sit tight and go for a peaceful victory? Looking forward to see what happens.

BigD

[nbarclay]

I'm expecting a 100K cultural victory sometime before 1600 AD (a little faster than I could launch a space ship this time around), assuming I'm right that the requirement to have double the culture of the closest competitor won't be a problem. Invading the other main continent is unnecessary.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Invading the other main continent is unnecessary.

Which is the main reason why I think Huge maps are really not that much of a challenge. Unless a truly Killer AI appears (not very likely, given there is so much room to expand into and neighbors are so far away), it is relatively simple to just become dominant in your corner of the world and build build build until a peaceful victory is achieved.

I'm not criticising anyone's game, just pointing out my main gripe with Huge maps (other than the fact that they take forever to play!). I believe Mountain Sage's playstyle directly reflects his preference in map size; peaceful builder trumps the AI on Huge maps. (This is in no way a comment on Mountain Sage's play ability, which is, as far as I can tell, well above average).

My hat is off to anyone who actually tries to invade Continent 2.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

Dominae, my situation in this game is not at all atypical for standard-map games. I have ample power to conquer the other continent with MAs; Japan fell to me in one turn and Mongolia in two (only because terrain slowed me down), and even the most advanced civs on the other continent are no stronger than they were. But as is often the case in standard-map games, I don't want to go to the trouble. The biggest difference is that a 100K cultural victory is so much easier on a huge map; Firaxis really should have scaled that requirement to map size. On a standard map, I'd have to either take my chances on a diplomatic victory (definitely risky unless I'd identify number two and start a world war against them) or wait for the space race.

I do think huge maps make warmongering a bit trickier. The rival civs are bigger, and the enemy unit counts can be pretty amazing. On a standard map, I almost certainly would have taken out the Japanese and Mongols with cavalry given the same technological advantage, but as it was, they had enough units that I didn't even dare try for Japan and I only took a bite out of Mongolia.

Still, I'll agree that it's probably harder for killer AIs to evolve on a huge map, because AIs have to swallow twice as many other AIs to control the same percentage of the world on a 16-civ huge map as on an 8-civ standard map. AIs simply aren't geared for the level of aggression that requires, in my experience (admittedly, not much of it on huge maps).

As for how good or bad huge maps are compared with standard maps for an essentially pure peaceful builder strategy, I wouldn't know. When the right opportunity arises, I always seem to be taken over by the dark side.

Nathan

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Dominae, my situation in this game is not at all atypical for standard-map games.

I think the difference is that, had Babylon not been located where they were, you could achieved the same with little to no "sweat". In smaller maps, the AI will declare war on you and is usually close enough to actually gets its units into good position. This means that it actually threatens you. On Huge maps, I imagine you can "sit back" until you've got an advantage.

I'm just extrapolating this from the AARs, by the way.


Dominae