Earth Map Strategies

[Jumping Choya]

I've been playing as the Chinese on Marla's map as well. Great start position.

Everybody on earth is annoyed with me. Everybody. Must be that lead I have. Unfortunately, my military might has been lacking for most of the game. The Japanese demanded horses from me. Ghandi has actually threatened me several times for maps and such.

I let them have what they want. It doesn't bother me too much. Their time is coming.

[Harovan]

Arrian, If you are lucky to grab the area SW of the sahara desert (roughly Guinea...Nigeria) and build your FP there, you have a wonderful production area. The Nile plains give plenty food and (with industrous workers quickly) mined deserts quickly produce settlers for a T-REX. You can build Suez and have a definite strategic advantage. Plus, this is a nice choke point to build some fortresses to protect you from warmongers. A paradise for a peaceful builder. May be on the new version (1.17) of Marla's, I will try an asian civ too. Definitely not a European (I'm not masochist ). But the AI's did not fight wars there, they built a patchwork over the whole Eurasia. By the way, the AI was too dumb to build Panama at my map, how about yours?

[Arrian]

Hmm, good point about subsaharan Africa - it is a nice place (and the Egyptians do have it in my game). Panama? Well, Panama (as in the country) is Aztecan, but I don't know if the AI was smart enough to build in such a way as to create a canal - I'll have a look next time I load the game.

The most hilarious city I've yet seen? An English town in the middle of South America - that just happens to have 2 coal within it's size1 radius (the English do not have steam power... I'm the only industrial age power). The Zulu have gotten over there too. The southern 1/2 of the continent is still empty, but given the size of the Pacific Ocean, by the time a settler team of mine could get over there it will be full. The Egyptians plunked down a city in northern Australia, as have the Zulu and the aforementioned Indians, which I also find pretty amusing (I've got 7 cities down there now, and am preparing to colonize New Zealand).

The Eurasian patchwork is the one thing I don't like about this map. Something has to be done to prevent the AI from spending tons of time and resources on colonizing worthless tundra. Maybe tundra should be flagged as terrain you can't build cities on. If the AI ran out of room earlier, I suspect they would do more fighting. As it stands, Europe has been entirely peaceful.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Jumping Choya
I've been playing as the Chinese on Marla's map as well. Great start position.

Everybody on earth is annoyed with me. Everybody. Must be that lead I have. Unfortunately, my military might has been lacking for most of the game. The Japanese demanded horses from me. Ghandi has actually threatened me several times for maps and such.

I let them have what they want. It doesn't bother me too much. Their time is coming.

Hmm, everyone annoyed at you? Very different than my experience. Except for a brief time at the beginning of the Sino-Indian war, everyone was polite with me. Cleopatra was, in the beginning of the war vs. the hated Ghandi, annoyed, but she came around. Despite the "politeness" of the AI, I have received 3 demands, all of which I have rejected - none lead to wars. Keep in mind that if you're really big, they fear you and will probably back down. Especially the Japanese. Compared to you, they're GARBAGE! Don't gift them things! Say no, and then sell them the thing they demanded.

Maybe part of the reason the AI likes me is the round of tech trading I did. I sold everyone Astronomy and Music Theory once it became clear that Egypt had both (though I wonder if the French would have gotten it if I hadn't sold it to them... they did beat me to Bach). I raked in an obscene amount of cash and everybody was quite pleased with me.

You will find that the AI on Marla's map generally has a terrible military, because all of its energy is spent trying to build more cities - wherever it can. Thus, when I attacked India, I saw something like 7 musketmen... after which I was killing pikemen and spearmen. NOT ONE WAR ELEPHANT, despite the fact that they had Chivalry. Late in the war, a stack of troops appeared north of a city I'd captured in the himalayas. It consisted of 5 archers, 3 spearmen, a pikeman, a horseman, and a warrior. That was the Indian offensive capability, which had been wandering Siberia for thousands of years. It was destroyed in 2 turns.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Arrian
The most hilarious city I've yet seen? An English town in the middle of South America - that just happens to have 2 coal within it's size1 radius

I know the city, I own it as I also managed to discover steam power first and Egypt has no other coal. Plus, I own a 2x Dyes city in S America. All my other cities are in N Africa. That the English own it in your game before steam power sounds strange. Let's not call it cheating, let's call it, well, a lucky coincidence

Originally posted by Arrian
The Eurasian patchwork is the one thing I don't like about this map. Something has to be done to prevent the AI from spending tons of time and resources on colonizing worthless tundra. Maybe tundra should be flagged as terrain you can't build cities on. If the AI ran out of room earlier, I suspect they would do more fighting.

As far as I know (didn't check it yet), in version 1.17 Marla has increased the food production of all terrain except tundra and desert by one, and increased the food per citizen to 3. As was stated in her thread, this prevents the AI from building worthless desert and tundra cities. Also, she gave a few civs (English, Romans and Japanese) an early ship (pirogue, transports 1 unit, Pottery needed).

I will give it a try after I assembled my new box in 2-3 weeks. I won't play Marla's again at my 350 MHz machine.

[Aeson]

I found the Egyptians to be in a somewhat bad starting position. The flood plains are great for pop-rushing, but I like my core cities to do as little of that as possible. Also the barbarians come quite early from northern Africa, maybe tracing the coast to get to the Romans? Sending a couple military that way early is a good idea, but also slows down contact with Eurasia. In the first game I played the Egyptians were the early losers, but that was just because I was the Zulus and needed some Horses and Saltpeter.

I think the Aztecs and Zulu's have the most advantageous starting positions. The Aztecs get a good portion of N. America, and have a monopoly on S. America if they want it. The Zulus only have to contend with the Egyptians for Africa, and with all the Barbarians, Impies do the best exploration job of any early unit.. I was able to stake out good claims on Austrailia and/or S. America with all the Civ's I've played with so far though, so any position is quite playable on Marla's map.

I've seen the Indians and Chinese with huge armies on this map. I had Africa to myself, and the Indians wiped out the Persians. The Persians respawned in Africa, and a force of about 50 War Elephants were headed towards Suez right before I was able to block the neck of land off with a couple of Impies. Also the Chinese went to war with the Greeks, and I saw comparable number of Riders passing some of my "AI gift" cities. All this before 500BC. I beat the Chinese to the Greeks though, all that way for nothing

Tech advancement is very quick on this map. Part of it is just all the food/commerce available, but that doesn't explain it all. I set everything back to normal in the editor, but Tech advancement is more like a small or standard map, definitely not the 40 turns for the first advance that random Huge maps always seem to have. Maybe it is because the AI makes contact so quickly in Europe and the Tech trades between them. It does seem off though.

[GePap]

Alone

Since I am a slow player, who likes to take things easily, I decided to p[lay the Aztecs alone in the new world, which meant getting all of North America for myself (Sout America just too far away due to corruption, except for a city at the mouth of the Amazon to get at all those gems. Well, being all alone certainly shows some of the strenghs of the game (the few there are). First, when I finally contacted everyone -by way of triremes to japan, I was of course, way behind tech since I was trying to climb alone. I also had to pay for horses, since Marla gave me none, which is fine. So now, as I jockey to join the world community from far away, i am dependent on my competitiors for horses (The Russians cancelled the first deal, now my suppliers are the egyptians) and since I have yet to get Navigation, I certainly can't mount an invasion of the old world (triremes too slow).

By the way, how to the iriquois do on this map? I mean, their UU is meaningless since they have to tared for horses and they won't find anyone to trade with for a while into the game.

[Harovan]

Aeson, I think I've seen your game. It's great. You posted a savegame somewhere. I wondered how you could get into industrial age and discover steam power roughly 500 BC. But in the top difficulty levels the tech speed is higher, I think due to the AI advantage. I am mostly playing at the "fun" levels Monarch or even Regent.

Personally I am sure, a good player can make an AI look bad in all of their possible starting positions. And except for 1 galley (needed to secure one of the islands in Atlantic, not to have an unsinkable carrier before my coast later) I did not pop rush at all.

Flood plains have some advantage over grassland. It's not useless to irrigate them in despotism, and irrigated and with a wheat resource (plenty of them at the map) they give food like crazy. And the effect increases after getting rid of Despotism. Mined deserts grant a sufficient production for the early game. You can easily compensate the loss of food with the food you get from the flood plains. And terrain improvements are a charm with those industrous workers.

In my game, I contacted the Zulus about 500 AD. They hadn't met anyone yet (the AI was busy with Siberia, and my Suez guard blocked some German and Bab explorers and settlers) and were hopelessly back in tech.

EDIT: As for horses , Egypt has plenty of it and I sold them to the American civs. They paid LOTs of bucks, in due time!

[Arrian]

I also believe that Marla changed the Tech rate. In my (Monarch) game, it's 1280 A.D. and I've just discovered industrialization... 4 turns to atomic theory. Tech is FLYING. Part of that is the fact that there is a lot of silk and other great trade squares China. Part of it is that I have a SSC (well, no colossus, but Cop's and Newton) that is pumping out ~200 science/turn - I'm at 90% science. Part of it is that the AI does trade tech agressively, and their science advantage early on sped up everything... and then the Great Library caught me up.

Aeson, the huge armies you saw are no doubt part and parcle of Deity level. They were probably "free units" given to the AI when it founds cities (isn't it 4 per new city on Diety? A defender or two, an attacker or two?). I have seen Japanese island cities in my game defended by Samurai - which are the only Samurai I've seen.

Ok, I have a decision to make in my game. The Americans just entered the Industrial Age (first AI civ to make it). They have yet to discover any Ind. Age techs, but it's only a matter of time before either they, or one of the "scientific" civs gets Nationalism... and then proceeds to trade it to everyone else. MPP hell is just around the corner. The Persians are my western neighbors. They are one of the weakest civs. They have 1 incense and some horses... and that's it. I don't have incense, but I'm trading with Greece for it - iron+9gold/turn for incense, which actually isn't too bad. Part of me wants to just whole up and race for the SS launch... but part of me wants to take down the Persians (and thus gain 5 local luxuries) first. Decisions, decisions. I really should just tell my 50 Cavalry regiments to mount up and ride. I don't know why I'm hesitating...

-Arrian

[Aeson]

I just checked the starting tech rate of Marla's map compared to a randomly generated huge map, and then a tiny map. On the random map with 3 beakers, the first tech's all took 40 turns to research. On Marla's map, all of the tech's were in the 8-20 turn range with 3 beakers. The tiny map had slightly longer research times than Marla's map, because there were less Civs and less starting techs. Setting the Tiny world size tech rate for Marla's map in the editor to 240 puts research back on par with a huge map. I guess she used a tiny map at 256x256 instead of huge.

[Aeson]

I guess changing the optimal number of cities for a tiny map would be in order too. I just reset all the values and turned on standard rules before I played, so I don't know what values were originally set for the map.

[Flight]

damn i feel like im really impatient now

I was playing as England ont his 1.4 tbird w/ 256 and turns were taking just over a minute at around 800AD, so I got bored. If it was longer i could do something else but a miunute is hardly enough time to concentrate on something else but also too long just to sit, ah well

So then i started a new game with only 6 AI civs; the Americans, English, Germans, Russians (me), Zulus, Indians and Japanese. On Monarch

I assume that england and japan had the piroque but they didnt expand beyond the islands surrounding them, no cities on the mainland. Ah well, bash them later

Germany attacked with severe numbers of swordsmen taking my cities around the caspian and eventually moscow, but my horsemen were eventually able to reclaim my cities and push into Germany. They declared war again, later and I got help from the Indians and Zulus. Great help they were; after taking everthing up to Spain and leaving them with Dresden on Corsica and 3 Spanish cities plus one in the Canaries I made peace and watched a stack of 30+ Indian units moving through my land

Meanwhile the Americans Have simply overwhelmed everything. They have filled North America and have about 6 colonies for various things in South America. They also have a tech lead of 1 or 2 which they will not trade for anything. I guess I'll have to invade them with tanks when the time comes...

The zulus captured a couple of the small German cities on the North coast of Africa. I dont remember what year it is but I have recently got my cossack machine started up. and took over the UK with lots of knights. Whilst doing this the Indians asked me for an alliance against the Germans, so I took all of Spain while a stack of more than 50 Indian units tried to make its way through my terrain.

I'm now deciding whether to invade the zulus or the Indians. I'm edging towards the Zulus due to that 50 unit stack of war elephants.

awesome map

[Harovan]

Playing on Marla's with only 7 civs sounds funny. I guess it will take till 1700-1800 AD, before the AI has filled the last hopeless corner of the map with junk cities.

[Arrian]

Wow, since I've been slogging through my game on the map, Marla & Co. have gone up to version 1.17 - with some interesting changes. The most important, I believe, is the increase in food/pop to 3 and making settlers more expensive to build. This ought to deal with the "infinte siberia sprawl." If I had "infinite patience" I might start a new game on the new version of the map... but it's gonna take all I've got to finish the one I've got going.

-Arrian

[Flight]

Actually the siberia sprall was worse with more civs, as they had no space to build. The AI's (apart from england and japan) have plenty of fertile land to build on, and although their cities are still farther from the capital, it is a lot better to look at than the tartan siberian wastes. I thought in this version, 17b, that people could not settle tundra, but you still get 2 food on the city base quare, so you can - it just isnt worth it for lots of size 1 cities - but the AI doesnt know this

As an update...I really want an implementation of stacking units. Moving over 60 units from europe to africa and then manouvering them in a big military campaign could've been a lot easier. I had Army group East, West and centre going South into Zulu territory, taking all their new size 1 cities. The Indians have a massive train of units going down the eastern coast which should help a lot...ATM I'm just coming up to their larger 6-10 cities. I might relocate my capital there with stalin and see what kind of production i can really get out of it. Oh and Lenin got killed when my cossack retreated

Oh yes and my golden age from the first attack of a cossack netted me 4 techs in 4,5,6,4 turns and 2 grand in the bank. I now have a tech lead over the Americans, which is perfect. I am also constructing a navy of ironclads to upgrade later to aid the culling of the Americans