4th Apolyton Civ3 Tournament : 12-31/Jan/2002

[Spaced Cowboy]

Damn, I could never get this game finished. I'm in 1250 AD with over 100 units to move each turn. Russians gone, Romans gone, Persian are three cities (matter of time) from being gone. Took them all out with a horde of whipped horsemen and ICS. As soon as I can get my forces across the ocean, the rest will be gone too.

I also found a really cool strategy. Leave your whipping one population city producing wealth on every turn except the turn before it goes to size two. On that turn change it to what you want to whip (horseman, galley, harbor, etc). Next turn whip your unit. Next turn go back to wealth. This can net you quite a bit of gold with ICS and still have plenty o units for the slaughter.

Horseman rule! It sucks to not have my favorite Mounted Warriors. They are too strong.

[White Elk]

Originally posted by Duncan Idaho
Definitely not. Forehand knowledge of the map and the opponents' starting locations eliminates the challenge

Actually, I agree. Often I gamble the sinking of Galleys to gain early contacts with the other Civs. The risk/reward of that gamble and other explorations would definately be diminished. I just think it would have been interesting to compare the two games. Especially with such diverse starting locations.

BTW, nice narrative You sound almost like a Discovery documentary.

Thanks, though I probably shouldn't quit my day job.

[Sirian]

Now that this one is winding down, here's a little bit about how I handled my early game.

The Start Location: there's enough information right at the start to move in the correct direction without cheating. Obviously plunking down right there was not a good option, as it would cost more turns than just to move to a better location. I was almost tempted to head north, since a game was up there and I saw green peeking that might be grass. BUT... then I looked over at the minimap and saw that I was near the northern icecap, not the southern. This had to mean that everything above me was also ice, and those green spots had to be hills. The direction to head in to find good land was south. I walked just far enough to reach some grass, settled in the last tundra square, which would ultimately let my capital just barely reach size 20. Perfect! In fact, if I had gone any farther my position would actually have been weakened! I had no idea at that moment HOW LITTLE good land there was.

There was room for two GOOD cities in the immediate vicinity, and the one on the right would get more grassland into play immediately so I settled it first, then the one below, near the wheat. I then had three cities, saw that the rest of the land in the region was dismal, and decided that this rock wasn't big enough for the both of us (Germany and Russia) so I cranked some archers, trained them up on the barbarians, and waited for a good looking opportunity to attack, going right for their capital while I still had only three cities. I won that fight, but barely, and got two of the other three Russian cities in the bargain. I then settled in to rapid expansion, dumping settlers into every possible location, nook and cranny and crevice, no matter how sad the city would be. Two would never get above 7, another 9, another 11, and a couple at 12, but it was better than nothing. Since I had all this land early, I decided to wait for the industrial age to do any more war. I knew that would mean less score for me (score is kinda odd in this game, very heavily weighted toward territory over time, favoring ancient aggression) but I would get to panzers asap and put them all out of their misery.

I was behind in tech until my forbidden palace in Moscow was completed in the heart of the middle ages. After that, ALL of my cities were low corruption, all heavy with coastline and trade, and I started catching up. I never did get any great leaders, or at least not until it was too late to matter (rolling through America in the late 1800's), so my conquest victory was earned on the back of expansion efficiency.


- Sirian

[MarkG]

Duncan processed the results, i'll post them later today

[adamb]

phew, this game is tough

OK, the game as it stands: moved my settler N/E to get the bonus food square, and then started a painful crawl towards the pesky Russians. After finding the horse resource ive built up an army of 8 units and just managed to take my first Russian city. Hopefully my horse army can steamroll over the Russian army and take out their swordsmen. Going to battle through, but with my capital so far away corruption is getting totally out of control. Im guessing im totally behind in tech and cites compared to the other cities....

[White Elk]

Originally posted by MarkG
Duncan processed the results, i'll post them later today

Am I looking in the wrong place or did something happen to delay the posting of the results?

Originally posted by MarkG
any volunteers to process the results

I offer my help for this and future games

[MarkG]

my computer at home crashed. i'm geting it back from service today...

[philler]

if it's not too late, I'll submit my game.

I never had time to finish this tournament and it's now obvious that I never will, so I'll retire and hopefully win the retirement part of the tournament

[Sirian]

my computer at home crashed. i'm geting it back from service today...

That was two weeks ago.

When can we expect some results? And when is the next game starting?

- Sirian

[nbarclay]

I didn't get into tournament play in time to compete in this one officially, but I figured I'd post my results anyhow. Normally, I'm not a big fan of diplomatic victory, but in this particular game, things worked out where a diplomatic ending made perfect sense. That came about in about 1854-1856. (I'm a bit fuzzy on the years since these victories happen more or less between turns.)

I then decided that I might as well back up to the turn before the diplomatic victory and win with a space race victory too. That happened in 1878-1880.

If I had thought to save the game right after I conquered Persia, I probably would have played out an alternate route to a domination victory as well. I had my basic strategy mapped out and probably plenty of firepower and technology, but with every country left in the world polite toward me, I just couldn't justify the bloodshed .

I'm also posting a story based on this game to the Stories forum, and probably telling a little more about the diplomatic aspect on the General forum.

Here's the diplomatic victory ending, in case anyone cares.

[nbarclay]

And here's the space race alternate ending. (St. Petersburg or some other city has to be switched over to building the Planetary Party Lounge since I just got Laser technology.)