5th Apolyton Civ3 Tournament : 1-21/Feb/2002

[La Fayette]

solo
Perfect, as usual.
It shows very clearly that a 'SS' game can be played peacefully with very nice results: you launch almost a century sooner than I do with a lot of fighting before starting the building of the SS.
I confess that civ3 and the aggressive AI induce me to strike back much more than really needed for that kind of game.
BEAKERS RULE!
Thank you for the lesson.
(I shall try to be peaceful at least in one of the forthcoming tournaments ).

[DrSpike]

I also tried for early landing. Tried is the operative word since lots of instructive mistakes were made, with a final landing date of 1922. I built Zimbabwe on the coast near the starting position, with 5 others. The critical choice for the entire early landing game is FP placement. I decided the persians didn't have enough nice land for the FP there, and decided to conquer them (partly because they had a suspiciously high amount of techs and weren't really playing ball with me), have a few extra pretty corrupt cities (but not too bad with my palace placement), then conquer/colonise another island after map making and build the FP there. I discovered the island to the South really quickly, so the plan was set in motion. This was so close to being a great strategy, since I would have had 5 good cities plus four quite corrupt ones on the mainland, and 6 good cities on the island. I calculated that building the FP in a city just North of the middle of the island would be fine, with a courthouse I thought I'd get two shields, quick enough. Boy was I dumb. Even with a rushed courthouse and 12 potential shields being produced the second shield remained elusive. I had to give up on building the FP there, and the entire island became an expensive mistake, apart from a handy backup coal resourse. The FP ended up in a persian city towards on the west side of the mainland, much much later than it would have been if I had built there straight away.

We live and learn

[DrSpike]

Btw great game Solo. I had a look at your and La Fayette's saves, and have some comments. (I don't mean to leave Duncan out, I just can't be bothered to download winrar )

It seems (albeit with hindsight) that with a goal of early landing there are several ways to go about this game that stand out.

1) Do as I did but with the FP higher on the island, probably near to where Solo had it.

2) Do not conquer the Persians and build the FP near the top of the island to the South - Solo's method

3) Build the capital where Solo did, conquer the Persians, and build the FP where I did. In retrospect this is probably what I'd do in a second game. I would pack one more city in in the main bunch (Solo- there is IMO room for another in the NE if the science city is moved down one, and the city to the North is moved one square to the SW). There is room for five in the old Persian empire, which is ideal.

4) Conquer the Russians/Germans, get leader and build FP in Moscow/Berlin. Interestingly La Fayette's (he conquered the Russians) empire was kicking out more science than either mine or Solo's, but clearly there is a large opportunity cost to setting this up. And if you don't get a leader.............................

Morals:

1) FP placement is everything.
2) 13 cities well spaced out is better than 13 cities 3 spaced. But if you dont have the room 13 cities packed in are so much better than 9 well spaced.
3) The science city is not as potent as in civ2, but my science city (which did get the all 3 early on and Seti later) was kicking out over 200 science before flight was discovered.

[kapapj]

On the starting island it was fairly easy to conquer the Persians after respawns.

It was also very easy to build most of the wonders and cultural improvements in the Capital.

A short war with the Germans was enough to jeopardize their expansion.

Conquering the Russians was also not a big job.

Further it was waiting for the moment of 20.000 CP in the Capital.
Which was in the year 2000. Totaling 2781 points.

[La Fayette]

Originally posted by DrSpike I had a look at your and La Fayette's saves, and have some comments. Morals:

1) FP placement is everything.
2) 13 cities well spaced out is better than 13 cities 3 spaced. But if you dont have the room 13 cities packed in are so much better than 9 well spaced.
3) The science city is not as potent as in civ2, but my science city (which did get the all 3 early on and Seti later) was kicking out over 200 science before flight was discovered.

I agree, Dr, but there is a lot of work left to you and me to come closer to solo's result (though I'm sure I shall launch much earlier next time if I don't play one half of the game conquering; I decided to go for launching much too late in the game: all those highly corrupt cities are almost no use if you don't aim at domination);

[DrSpike]

One should definitely have a victory condition in mind early on and stick to it. I agree Solo's result is far and away the best, as I indicated in my post. Mine was average, but worth posting about as it could have so easily been much much better if that elusive 2nd shield.................

Solo's better handling of FP placement was IMO 90% of what separated us.

[solo]

I agree, but would add that early Republic was another key, since techs come so much more quickly than in Depotism. I also agree about room for another city on the mainland, but the Persians beat me to the spot in the northeast, so I decided on settling that island earlier, since more than just one more city was needed, anyways. The FP took something like 70 turns to build, if I recall correctly, and was preceded by a courthouse in its city.

Two more details I forgot to mention, was that I built Sistine as another wonder and switched to Democracy after getting Theory of Evolution. I also goofed up the placement of SETI, as it should have been in the same city as Newton's, but there were enough surplus beakers to make up for this mistake.

[philler]

conquest, 1762 AD, 3610 points

conquest, 1762 AD, 3610 points

I'll try to recap chronologically what I did, unfortunately I don't remember precisely at what time I did it... so bear with me!

for the next tournament I'm going to write down the main events (wars, new goverment, etc.) as they occur, so you can expect a more detailed recap next time.

btw, I still don't know why the summary replay at the end of the game never works for me.

---
so briefly, as I have to attack tournament 6 now :

the persians were conquered very quickly, and the starting island was settled in the following years.
I had obviously overestimated the persian army, so I was left with a fair share of various military units who had nothing to do... by that time I had discovered map making and explored the parts of the world in my vicinity.
I decided that the small babylonian island would be the next step of my expansion. My swordmen took care of them in a few turns, and the babylonians were scaled down to some remote islands in the west and the south.
Since my war against the babylonian was very quick, I had no need to raze their cities so I kept all of them including one with the Great Lighthouse.
A great leader appeared during my war against Babylon. I didn't use him immediately.

I then settled the island west of my starting location, to join my empire to the newly-conquered former-babylonian island.
due to corruption, all these cities were pretty useless and slow to build (I whipped a lot as I was still under despotism. I had decided to have a very aggressive behavior and thought despotism was the way to go). Perhaps I should have switched to monarchy at this point and used the GL to build a forbidden palace on the western island, but I didn't as I decided to keep
the GL to build an army (and then build the heroic epic in order to get another GL).

I was trying to decide who to attack next and had made my choice for the russians, when the greeks attacked me for no apparent reasons.
I had knights and they had not, so they were conquered rather quickly. I built an army for the occasion. The army was size 1 as it had to travel with a trireme to the greek island (the southern one, with their capital), where I added 2 elite knights to it (which was a mistake, as my only amry was then stuck forever on that island -- I thought caravels (which I was beginning to build) could transport size 3 armies, and I was wrong, as I didn't play long enough to discover magnetism.
An archer (dunno why I still had archers left...) defending a a freshly-captured greek cities against two swordmen spawned a Great Leader, while the heroic epic was still being built (I think... I promise next time it won't be such a mess!!! ).

When the greeks were exterminated, I used that leader to build a forbidden palace on the island south of my starting island, and north of the main greek island.
This island was small but nice, and this way the former greek cities I had not razed could also benefit from the effect of the forbidden palace.
This is also the time when the great Zulu Despotism became a monarchy.

At that point I had always been lagging in tech and had caught up only by trading tech against peace treaties against vanishing civs... and I noticed that apparently neither the russians nor the germans were looking in the way of military tradition.
As I was only 2 techs away from it I put on a massive research effort (I had approximately 3000 gold in treasury + Wall Street) to discover military tradition as soon as possible. It was one of the rare times when I researched techs instead of buying them around and trading them agaisnt my mercy, I had 0% tech pretty much since the beginning of the game, with one scientist in one remote city to discover at least something every 40 turns! )

All my knights were gathered in a city located in the eastern part of my starting island, by the sea, with enough caravels to embark them all.
As soon as I discovered military tradition, I use my remaining money to upgrade all my knights to cavalry, and embark them the following turn.
as the main russian island was only 2 turns of sea travel away, it was a matter of turns before the weak russian civilization fell to the great zulus!

Then I attacked my strongest opponent, the germans, who surprisingly had still not discovered miltary tradition.
my attack was not very well planned (caravel arriving one by one, on various locations) so I suffered many losses during the first few turns.
I even lost a city on a remote island which was defended by only one impi, and it just so happened that that city had saltpeter as resource!!
At that point I the germans refused to talk to men so I had no way of knowing whether they had discovered miltary tradition or not!!
Fortunately when they took the city they also destroyed the harbor, so I had time to take the city back!
It pointed out to me that the germans had NO saltpeter in their resource, and I also noticed that they had only one source of iron, which I quickly cut off.

Perhaps it took me as much as 15 turns to exterminate the germans as I made a few mistakes and underestimated their defence (they had only pikemen to defend cities but they were numerous, and when they still had iron knights were coming out of everywhere and really hurting my cavalries [I had only cavalries as I hadn'nt bothered building musketmen]), especially on the northern island.
I decided to raze their cities except the last few ones, and destroyed many great wonders in the process. it was a pity to raze those wonders but I couldn't run the risk of the cities reverting...

When I was done with the germans, I still had to take care of my old babylonian friends, who had only 2 cities left, in the icy and moutainous mountains south of their starting location.
I had rush-bought regular cavalries from the two cities I had on that island, but somehow they managed to lose against bowmen!!

I would never have though that the babylonians would be the last ones standing, but I never sent enough units at the same time to take care of them once and for all.
I sent 3 cavalries from the babylonian starting island, and they were destroyed, giving me a conquest victory.

I had one unused great leader at the end of the game, who spawned during my war against the russians (or was it the germans? )

-----
I'm not too happy with how things went, it could have been much better had I switched to monarchy earlier and used my first great leader to build a forbidden palace on the island west of my starting island which hosted quite a few cities.
then again, had I done this perhaps I would have felt cosy just staying on three islands (the starting one, the one west of it, and the babylonian one), I wouldn't have attacked the other ones and perhaps I would have eventually lost a space race or a UN vote, so...
-----

to conclude:

Zuluuuu powwwwaaaaaaa!

[Eflin Soth]

mhhhhh

The pacific game doesn't make.
I have again played this game, but instead that to go to conquer the world I have remained in my island, and I have economically developed and scentific.

Instead of winning with 5000 points I have won with 1500. The population however it had to be happier, in 1800 I had almost all discovered already.

BAHHH, better the war..... (in civilization)

[Be Quicker]

Re: mhhhhh

Originally posted by Eflin Soth
The pacific game doesn't make.
I have again played this game, but instead that to go to conquer the world I have remained in my island, and I have economically developed and scentific.

Instead of winning with 5000 points I have won with 1500. The population however it had to be happier, in 1800 I had almost all discovered already.

BAHHH, better the war..... (in civilization)

Hear Hear!
Empire surface area, population number, and number of military units, are the most important factors in the score. I am currently doing tourny 6 with only four cities and I am going to get an all time low score.

[DrSpike]

Score has never been very relevant in civ games. Impressive games are early victories in the victory class of your choice. Early landings for one never get good scores for the reasons stated above.

[mengo76]

OCC? Cultural 1965AD 541pts

i started 3 days ago, so i went for OCC otherwise i would never finish the game in time

however... i'm not sure of the exact OCC rules... one persian size 4 or so city converted to me and i accepted it and kept it only long enough to build 4 workers, does that make it non-OCC?

(the disbanding of captured/reverted cities must work like razing captured cities, cuz the persians were futious at me the rest of the game!)

btw i must have researched only 2 or 3 techs on my own - on the way to GL. after that it was zero science spending and buy the tech after all 5 other civs had it (so it ws cheapest). oh yeah, got 2 free techs with theory of evolution which sold for nice coin :-)

[solo]

OCC rules do not matter in this tournament, and any "official" set of OCC rules for CivIII have yet to be agreed upon and established by players here. However, one city does mean exactly that, since a captured city can be razed, or one coming by cultural absorption can be rebuffed.

In your particular case, if you had disbanded workers as soon as produced by the 2nd city, rather than making any use out of them, the net result would have been the same as having only one city, so why quibble? However, using those extra workers to increase the population of your capital, or for any terrain improvements would have been counter to the premise of OCC.

[Aleric]

Zulu Island Tournament

Domination victory in 1960, 3246 points. I wasted a few turns near the end to try and get close to the exact border point for a domination victory. By my figuring I had to control a dozen or so tiles over the 2/3 percentage before winning.

[Kalani]

Culture Win 1955 - 2900+

Yeah, I know it's late but I just finished it today. Thought some of you might be interested. Doesn't matter if the score is not "counted," I know I did pretty well and I had fun doing it. My first cultural victory, period. Of course, I think it could have been done much earlier by pop rushing improvements in multiple cities and going for the 100,000 option, but I was trying to be a humane ruler. Except for early Persian xenophobia. A ruler has to get a leg up somehow.

Took the Persians out early, got a great leader in last fight with them conquering respawned cities in NE peninsula. Knew I wanted culture win, used leader for Great Library in Zimbabwe way back in BC (2000+?), but kept my research high and maintained tech lead throughout. Other than small skirmish with Russians (they took Ulundi twice), no war at all. Took about five cities culturally.

Grabbed the whole western continent, competed with Greeks for Southern, and some islands, built a few cities just for luxuries.

Zimbabwe ended with ten wonders, 20,000 culture points in 1955. I'm surprised someone got a 20,000 pt. culture victory before that without planning to! I was dead set on it the whole time.

Had some fun pissing off the Germans by sinking their ships with privateers. I wanted to keep them down cause I figured if they ever got their panzers, they'd come for me. They never got to the techs, I think.

Result: A world dominated by cultural Zulu who were asking top dollar for all the luxuries. No major wars--meaning no large invasions of home islands. And my only war was exterminating the Persians early and counterattacking Russia, the only saps stupid enough to think they could attack.

Fun game, though I must confess a tournament with 6 weeks would be much more humane with my busy schedule. Looking forward to playing with the new patch. By the way, does anyone know if coastal fortresses actually work? I've never seen them take a shot at a passing ship, and I thought they were supposed to do that.