3rd Apolyton CtP2 SP Tournament: 1 August - 1 September 2002

[Jesper Portus]

Originally posted by ETB
I am really pleased with GoodMod – I plan to use it from now on! I was reminded of Nordicus (and the old CtP1 days) when I started seeing Poppies, Salmon, and all these other goods. Martin, you have done an excellent job with GoodMod!

GoodMod is a very good mod! I like it too!
That is another benefit of this tournament: Playing unknown mods.

Thanks tot the modmakers and Locutus!

Actually I have conquered all but the arabians.
Therefore I increased my economic power and built spies. With three spies and 1 cannon and some money (the amount of 1 turn per city was enough) I "bought" 4 cities from the arabian empire. I mean: Revolt, new empire without troops, captured with one cannon!

Now it is 1600 AD and I can start to change the world into Gaia! My plan is to conquer the world and built very large citys.

My biggest city ever has 500.000 citizens. But it must be possible to have over 1.000.000. Or?

So long
Jesper Portus

[mnbryan37]

Just started this tournement last weekend, and am having a ball. I've never played with just a bunch of islands before. I'm playing for the Military victory, and have already made enough mistakes so that I probably won't better the standard set by Locutus. I have invaded the various islands in the worst possible order, so that I end up sending my troops on very long boat rides.

I'm glad you cut back to the "Hard" level, as I haven't worked up the courage for the two harder levels yet. For those who were disappointed in the AI military action in this game, just wait until you start on thee same land mass as 2 or 3 AI's.

I hate to agree with my son, but I think reloads should be minimized in the tournament games. I use them all the time when I am learning a new level, but if the purpose of the tournaments is to compare my skill vs. another, we should be playing under the same rules. I could see using a reload if your first city gets wiped out, but once you have gone far enough into the game to learn things that improve your strategy, you obviously improve your score.

[Shadow]

Building the Apolyton Pack... HAHAHA

ETB, how did you do that screen capture???
What keys do you need to hit?
I wanted to do that a couple of times in my game and post the pics, 'cos some real strange things were happening... it was like cities were being built over water, then the cities and land dissapearing... I just get that from how PW were spread around... strange.

Shadow

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by ETB
The Dutch decided to attack me in the 17th Century, so I made them my first victim (sorry Locutus). Although they only had the three cities on their island, the Greeks had already taken Den Haag. So I was only able to take the other two cities. I have attached the message containing the elimination of the Dutch.

From a Modmaker point of view it would have been better if the Greeks overtook the whole island, but I guess this city was conquered by the Barbarian first and then conquered by the Greeks instead of reconquered by the Dutch as it was the case in my game.

Originally posted by ETB
I used the mg_betterai file supplied by Martin earlier in this thread, but my troops still became restless for about a dozen turns in the early 20th Century. I actually didn’t notice it for a couple of turns with all the troop movement going on, but it finally hit me that none of my troops were staying in sentry or fortified positions. Personally, I suspect that they all had too much caffeine! Fortunately, the troops on my ships stayed on their ships…..

Are you shure you reloaded slic before, actual I outcommented the code that should only had an effect on the AI and contained this ActivateAllUnits event.

To reloadslic just open the chat window by typing the apostrophe key (') and enter: /reloadslic

Originally posted by ETB
I am really pleased with GoodMod – I plan to use it from now on! I was reminded of Nordicus (and the old CtP1 days) when I started seeing Poppies, Salmon, and all these other goods. Martin, you have done an excellent job with GoodMod!

Glad to hear you like yeah the Poppies from CTP1 and the other two goods from the original CTP1 and of course all the ones from Nordicus' mod, I remade most of the graphics to make them look better on the map then Nordicus' original ones.

-Martin

[ETB]

I have attached a funny message that I received about the Greeks building the Apolyton Pack. I get this message once or twice in each SAP game that I’ve played. Of course they never actually complete the wonder, but this is the first time that I remembered to capture the message.

[ETB]

I finally got to start my game. The Greeks were by far the fastest starter in the game as they built 9 out of the 10 first wonders! The Greeks held a commanding lead by the 20th Century. I let what I had previously read in this thread influence my start and I moved my settler for about 15 turns before building my first city. I usually build my first city within a few turns. I ended up cramming 6 cities on my island. I felt like an AI placing my cities so close together! Looking back, I could have done a better job of positioning the cities to get a seventh one on the island. Anyway, I will probably never wait so long to build my first city again!

The Dutch decided to attack me in the 17th Century, so I made them my first victim (sorry Locutus). Although they only had the three cities on their island, the Greeks had already taken Den Haag. So I was only able to take the other two cities. I have attached the message containing the elimination of the Dutch.

I formed an alliance with the Indians, who then dragged me into a war with the Phoenicians. Then the most-powerful Greeks and the second-most-powerful Arabs attacked me! I was quite busy with all of them through the 20th Century. It’s been great fun distributing my troops across the various islands, although they seem to be getting seasick! I have been playing too many land-based games lately – the Rulers-of-the-Seas is a great change of pace.

I used the mg_betterai file supplied by Martin earlier in this thread, but my troops still became restless for about a dozen turns in the early 20th Century. I actually didn’t notice it for a couple of turns with all the troop movement going on, but it finally hit me that none of my troops were staying in sentry or fortified positions. Personally, I suspect that they all had too much caffeine! Fortunately, the troops on my ships stayed on their ships…..

I am really pleased with GoodMod – I plan to use it from now on! I was reminded of Nordicus (and the old CtP1 days) when I started seeing Poppies, Salmon, and all these other goods. Martin, you have done an excellent job with GoodMod!

[centrifuge]

I was reading through this thread again, and realized that I totally spaced posting my finished game

Anyway, here it is, diplomatic victory, 810 AD, score: 6370.

It was pretty fun going for the quick win, and it would have been a lot quicker if the Arabians weren't such warmongers! So I had to crush them I mean afterall, they were getting in the way of my dream for world peace

On a side note, I'm kind of disheartened by all of this talk about restarting the tournament games from the beginning... It seems against the original spirit of the tournament IMHO.

For the attached game, just hit the end turn button, and accept Greece's tribute.

[TheArsenal]

Oh, one other thing I figured out that cost me maybe ten to fifteen turns. Although they do not show up on the diplomacy screen, to achieve a Diplomatic Victory, any cities held by the Barbarians have to be captured/destroyed.

[HuangShang]

Originally posted by Shadow
I realised on completion of this game that it's only the second game I've ever actually properly completed, the first being total military domination and anihilation.
Why? I get bored quick I guess...

yeah im like that too...
that probably why i lost
if only there were as many good senarios as mods (or maybe i cant find all of them)

[HuangShang]

god i lost... it was end year and the greeks were still first and the Arabs(the original arabs) were still there along w/ the original indonesians

Edit ive already restarted from the begining

[TheArsenal]

Done

Okay, finished. Diplomatic Victory at the end of 2217 A.D., the save game is 2218 the turn after the endgame movie. Interesting game.

My intent was to win by conquering all civs, but I figured out early on that I wasn’t going to be able to pull that off because I spent too much of the early game too weak and too far behind on science. So I tried constant diplomacy on all the nations and divided them into civs that were predisposed to be friendly towards me (only two: the Greeks and the Indonesians) and those who required constantly paying large sums of money and giving up maps only to dislike me again after a few turns. Those who didn’t like me, I went to war with one by one. The Arabians gave me the most trouble because I stupidly underestimated their forces and they caught me by surprise. I was bogged down fighting them for far too long. The Indians and the Dutch were the easiest to conquer.

[Shadow]

Greetings all!
After many hours crouched over the trusty computer I'm finally ready to submit my game.

A few things I'd like to say about the game...


Firstly about the competition:

I realised on completion of this game that it's only the second game I've ever actually properly completed, the first being total military domination and anihilation.
Why? I get bored quick I guess...
I suppose what kept me going was the fact that it was bigger than just my game, it was a competition, a bit of fun, and I wanted to be a part of it all and share the enjoyment with the others - you guys!


Secondly, about the game itself:

My basic gameplan was to win by diplomacy (never done that before), but to race to nuke technology and then use scare tactics to haul the other AI civs into an Alliance with me.

Did it work? HELL NO!!!

The barbs took a city at first, but took it back just as I was able to get off the island. Any bit of land I found that would sustain a city and wasn't taken up, I built on. The Phoenecians were then the first to attack me, and before long I took back the city, and continued trying to be allies with everyone.
The Phoenecians didn't stop there though, so when I reached nuke technology, I thought I'd give them a nice demonstration of what I'd just learnt... I was even nice enough to take the show right into their own cities... all of them in fact... that's just how nice I am!

With that civ out of the way, I went about some serious diplomacy and handing out extravegant gifts, but to no avail unfortunately. I found that the islands and water were quite a deterant to attacks, and only when I was on another civs continent did they attack, and attack they did! I wasn't about to put up with it though. Even after taking a city or two from each they weren't gunna be cool about things. Many time I tried putting diplomats on their shores, but they always took them out.
(I also noticed in the dying stages that all diplomatic relations phrases when checking 'intelligence' said 'bloodbath', never come across that before.)

So I was forced to give 'free' demonstations of how to part atoms in the majority of cities around the globe. A lot of the time I couldn't be bothered taking care of them, so I just razed them to the ground. At some point I destroyed the Emancipation Act Wonder, so instead of welcoming citizens I starting getting slaves... in 2200!
You'll see a lot of gaps all over the world where there's just no cities, but lots of PW things around. LOTS of bare land should another civ come along.
The only remaining civ other than me is the Dutch.

I even got a wakeup call from the Ethiopians... 4 fasciasts came out of nowhere and took a lightly defended city! No drama taking it back, conquered them easily.

So I did finish as I set out to, but it took a LOT longer than I thought it would. All in all an enjoyable game.

Thanks to Loc, the players, Apolyton, and anyone else that had a hand in setting this up.

Cheers,
Shadow

[HuangShang]

yeah... go island hopping

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by Locutus
Jesper,
Yes, I figured that too (lot of water hurting the AI), but it always gives fun games so I thought it couldn't hurt for a change. Some future Tournament game will definitely be (almost) land-only as well...

I find I have the most fun when there are both large land masses containing a few civs on the same continent, and a large amount of water. That way both the land and water aspects are in play. Personally, I'm not a big fan of all land games, and have yet to finish one. But its all a matter of personal preference.

Hopefully I will be finished with this game tonight. It's been interesting. I have an Alliance with the Greeks and Indonesians. I destroyed everyone else but the Polynesians, and they are on their last 4 cities, and I have both a city and sizeable force on their continent. Unfortunately, a Greek one-tile island city revolted and became Americans, and they are unresponsive to diplomacy. So now I may have to smash them as well. We'll see.

[Jesper Portus]

Originally posted by Locutus
Jesper,
Yes, I figured that too (lot of water hurting the AI), but it always gives fun games so I thought it couldn't hurt for a change. Some future Tournament game will definitely be (almost) land-only as well...

I like the changes and the testing of different mods. Thanks for that and all your engagement.

Yet I have conquerd all but the arabians and inodnesians. It is 1190 and now I built up my citys to improve my economic power. After that I will "buy" the rest of the world. Never tried spies before - so let´s test!

So long

Jesper