Psychotic Wonder Building

[Arrian]

But if you've been beating on the AIs properly, they don't have access to saltpeter, or even iron. You're dealing with archers and spearmen

Actually, in my Chinese game, I had to leave the Indians alone for a bit, so they had iron. Pikemen & War Elephants vs. HORDES of Riders. They did not last long. I took 1 or 2 cities per turn.

The other AIs, however, were not allowed to use iron. I took it away. [Seinfeld "Soup Nazi" voice] NO IRON FOR YOU! [/Seinfeld "Soup Nazi" voice].

Pardon me today, btw, I was playing until 2am and I'm barely functioning.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Theseus
Sir Ralph is now down to 3 cities for the Archer Rush.

I'm down to attack the Greeks with 1 vet archer, 1 reg and 1 elite warrior, raze 1 city and get a tech and 2 cities for peace. Sounds hazardous, no? I even succeeded to defeat a regular hoplite, well, my unit defending, that is.

What really disturbs me here is, that nobody except Aeson is talking about wonders . So I will, well, try at least to look not like a thread jacker. I usually don't give a damn on ancient wonders, but Aesons strategy notes are as always brilliant, and so I will try to get some in the AU 103 game, using some techniques he describes.

[Lord Merciless]

I do go after these resources, but in most of my games they are often buried deep inside AI Civs's territories, and it's not rare to see an AI cities built on top of them.

[Arrian]

Sir Ralph is right. And since I'm largely responsible for the threadjack...

Aeson's wonder building tips are good, particularly if you are on a large continent with most of the AI civs. Then you have the luxury of being able to investigate their cities and mess up their growth.

I would like to add that if wonder building is your priority, a late ancient/early medieval golden age is the way to go. Triggering your GA by building the Hanging Gardens, for instance, is great for this. This should give you a nice jump on the medieval wonders. Of course, if you manage the type of wonder building success Aeson has, your golden age WILL be somewhere in the ancient age. With China, clearly it will be triggered by the Great Wall.

The important message I think Aeson was trying to convey is that in order to be the ultimate builder, you have to hamper the AI... which pretty much means war. Buying workers is hit 'n miss. Stealing them is another thing. Plus you can rip up their improvements, steal their resources/luxuries, and force them into survival mode. This requires fewer units than you might think. So it is possible to build and fight at the same time - in fact, that may be the most effective method of all.

-Arrian

p.s. Oh, one more thing. Kinda like the Great Library, it seems that the AI isn't as interested in the Hanging Gardens anymore after 1.29.

[Theseus]

Sorry, SR, I'm equally at fault.

Re GWs:

In addition to hampering the AI civs, Aeson points out that avoiding GW cascades is critically important.

Anybody have a sense of which cascades are the ones to watch out for, and what the solutions (order?) are?

(ps: Arrian, I was at least close in referencing the Emperor... and next time you quote Princess Bride, you gotta give me a chance to slip in"You made the greatest mistake of all...")

[Arrian]

Cascades:

Oracle to Pyramids. Pyramids to GL (though less so than pre-1.29). Anything being build in a coastal city to the Colossus, or failing that the Lighthouse. Great Library to Great Wall or Hanging Gardens, depending on what tech is out there (some of this is dependent on the human. If you trade away Monarchy, you may get a HG cascade).

Sun Tzu/Sistine/Leo is a tough cascade. What gets real nasty is when this spills over to Copernicus and/or Bach. Ouch. If there is at least one strong (tech-wise) AI out there, this is a possibility.

After that, it's clear sailing.

-Arrian

(I figure the "Never go in against a Sicilian, when DEATH is on the line!" was implied The Sicilian in me applauded)

[Theseus]

So Aeson's saying he's beating all these cascades??!! Un-frigging-believable.

I can't even get close.

We should consider this when we do the GW game in AU.

(last ps: Actually, considing the topic, I was referring to "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." But I'm glad you liked it.)

[Catt]

Cascades

Soren indicated (in plain English) that the AIs assign more importance to optional technologies under 1.29f (he actually said that 1.21 tweaked the AIs to not care so much about optional techs and that 1.29 reversed the trend a bit).

Not enough gameplay under my belt to say for sure, but I definitely experienced some cascade problems in "Give Peace a Chance" with Newton's / Shakespeare's / Magellan's -- only one of which is in the mandatory tech path. Used to be you could lacksadaisically go back to get Shakespeare's after first researching Steam Power and/or Industrialization . . . not anymore, I fear.

All this of course assumes that you haven't achieved a good-sized tech lead by the time the end of the MIddle Ages rolls around . . .

Catt

[Lord Merciless]

The Medieval Age is the hardest to master. 9 wonders in all. It really depends on the map to be able to build them all. If you play with 16 civs on continental maps, there is no way you can build them all. First, the tech rate will be high; second, you can't reach all the civs in time to mess them up. So the only solution is to generate leaders, but that's kind unreliable, too.

[Aeson]

Well I finished up the Chinese game. The last close call was Leo's, the French had a cascade going all the way from the Hanging Gardens, during which time they switched to/from Sistene, Sun Tzu's, Copernicus, and JS Bach! There was no way to beat them with pure production, had to use my final leader. I had rushed 2 other wonders with leaders earlier, but I could have built those most likely anyways.

After Leo's the AI's usually didn't even get a chance to start any wonders. One thing I wanted to touch on that I didn't mention was the timing of the GA.

To get all the ancient era wonders, you just about need an ancient era GA. I like to time it to hit right when I've changed into Monarchy or Republic, and as early as possible. With China, Monarchy is the beeline I take, but their GA isn't until the Great Wall. Egypt has a very nicely timed GA, as you can beeline for Republic or Monarchy by the time the Pyramids have been built. With no civ specific traits, the first wonder built will start the GA, so I try to time the Oracle, Pyramids, Colossus, and government tech all for about the same point in time.

The AI absolutely ignores Literacy in 1.29f. I was playing an OCC attempt at Deity earlier today where I was able to build the Colossus, Oracle, and Hanging Gardens before I had to build the Great Library. It was just about the perfect starting location though, but still none of the AI had Literacy until I traded it to them 1 turn before the GL was finished. One of them was even in the Middle Ages by that time.

Here's the final save to my Chinese game. While I did get all the wonders, it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. Leo's definitely deserves a *. Having only 2 of the 6 AI on my continent was a big part of the problem.

[Arrian]

Wow, Aeson. That's about all I can say. That's amazing.

I too finished my China game, somewhere around 1500AD. It just took me a little while to get my troops in position. Zululand was invaded and 5 leaders later (army, Univ. Suffrage, ToE, army, and nothing, as it was the last turn) was destroyed. Happily, my original horseman elite+leader, The Companions, made it all the way to elite Cavalry, meaning he created 2 great leaders and could have gotten a third, had I chosen to drag things out. He had quite a career.

I was going to leave the Zulu with a little city named "Zulu reservation" and play longer, but I decided to just pull the trigger. Amusingly enough, when I took "Zulu reservation" the Zulu repopped! Lucky for me they repopped on the same small island, so it only took 2 extra turns to hunt them down and kill them.

A minor change (I think) to one of the wonders that I noticed: Universal Suffrage was generation 4 culture per turn. Didn't it use to be less?

-Arrian

[Aeson]

Do leader generating elites retain their names when upgraded?

[Theseus]

Yup... it can get confusing.

For instance, I named a Horsemen* the King's Horsemen... then I kept getting confused as it upgraded through Knight and Cav.

I have yet to see one of these guys, after upgrading, generate a new GL... do you get to name it again?

[Arrian]

Yes, you do get to name it again, but the default choice is the original name. Thus, the popup that came up when the Rider version of the unit created a leader already read "The Companions." All I had to do was press enter.

Unfortunately, my most inspired named unit (The Nine ) only generated one leader.

-Arrian

[Catt]

Originally posted by Theseus
Yup... it can get confusing.

For instance, I named a Horsemen* the King's Horsemen... then I kept getting confused as it upgraded through Knight and Cav.

One of the first opportunities I had to rename a unit I just hit the "O" button -- accepting the new name of "Horseman" but thinking that since I hadn't changed the name I was electing to not utilize the rename function.

On at least 4 or 5 subsequent occasions during that game I zoomed to a city to upgrade that damn "Horseman" that I somehow missed in my knight and cavalry upgrades and that kept appearing in the right-click dropdown of available units.

(Yeah, I know, it shouldn't have happened 4 or 5 times, but what can I say?).