Civ 4 BTS Succession Game

[Oerwinde]

I've been busy with work and Mask of the Betrayer, been watching the thread though and will likely give it a crack this weekend.

[Walsingham]

Bum. I hath forgotten my bloody account name and passsword for photobucket. I am a cybercretin.

[Pidesco]

I created an imageshack account for use in this thread.

[Walsingham]

Oho. I wasn't sure if we could use that, or if it was for looking at your images. What a thoughtful chap you are.

[Walsingham]

Who's up next?

[Oerwinde]

Well, I played some, its hard to keep track of what you do and when though... Anyway, the following things of note happened during my reign

 

- Razed that Babylonian city, Brippa or whatever

- Founded Port Avellone near Crossroad Keep

- Built Heroic Epic in Peragus, also added a great general to the city to boost XP.

- Some sort of horse quest was started, need to build 7 stables. We have 6 cities.

- Began siege of Babylon, sending a steady flow of catapults, currently their defense is at 2%, and I razed their iron mine and some of their cottages.

- Switched to Serfdom

- Discovered Engineering and Feudalism

 

Site of Port Avellone

 

God_Emperor_Feargus_AD_0980.zip

Edited October 19, 2007 by Oerwinde

[Enoch]

Cool. Razing that Iron mine should make Babylon's fall just a matter of time. As I think I noted on the old dot-map, Port Avellone will make an excellent Great Person factory. Allocate the wheat tile that XRK is currently working to it, corral those cows, and irrigate everything else. Build plenty of specialist-enabling buildings (library, forge, market, temple, etc.), the National Epic, and before we know it, it'll be popping out great people left and right.

 

One thing-- Serfdom? Really? Slavery is sooo much better. Looks like you all need to learn the Ways of the Whip! If you want faster workers, just whip some extras! I usually stay in slavery until Emancipation becomes available, unless I'm running a specialist-based economy (in which case, it's Caste System & Pacifism as soon as I have the techs for them).

[Pidesco]

While I have long known the power of the whip in Civ, I simply refuse to use it. It's cheap and it's evil. This just means I have to stay away from the highest difficulty levels.

[Enoch]

While I have long known the power of the whip in Civ, I simply refuse to use it. It's cheap and it's evil. This just means I have to stay away from the highest difficulty levels.

Is it really any more evil than putting a city of 40,000 people to the sword just because their leader built the town 50 miles east of where it should have been? Yeah, it's probably not entirely balanced, but since it's the only way to rush production before the industrial age, I've got no problem with allowing a few thousand of my loyal subjects to give up their tiny, insignificant lives for the good of the Empire.

[Kissamies]

I'm a bit on the middle ground on slavery. I use it and sometimes a lot, but I don't swear by it like some people do. The new random events bring some balance to it. I like serfdom, because I dislike building hordes of workers and then micromanaging them around. Of course I could put them on auto, but then they wouldn't build what I wanted them to build. Should have maybe waited until after the war and the consolidation phase until switching, though.

 

Well, I have my idiosyncrasies like not chopping all the forests... especially those on hills.

[Oerwinde]

One thing-- Serfdom? Really? Slavery is sooo much better. Looks like you all need to learn the Ways of the Whip! If you want faster workers, just whip some extras! I usually stay in slavery until Emancipation becomes available, unless I'm running a specialist-based economy (in which case, it's Caste System & Pacifism as soon as I have the techs for them).

 

I tend to use serfdom until I get emancipation. And sometimes I even keep serfdom unless I'm using a financial civ. I just never could justify the drop in population to finish crap.

[Enoch]

I tend to use serfdom until I get emancipation. And sometimes I even keep serfdom unless I'm using a financial civ. I just never could justify the drop in population to finish crap.

It all depends on what the city needs. In effect, the whip converts food into hammers. If the city is a GP-pump, with 3 food bonus resources and a granary but no mined hills, you can get the population back in a far far shorter time than you would've taken to generate those hammers. Capital cities early in the game are good candidates for the whip, too. They usually have a food bonuses resource or two that let them re-grow the lost population quite quickly, especially if a Granary is an early priority. Mostly, the benefit of the whip is that it lets you specialize your cities more aggressively-- you can forgo mines and workshops entirely in your big commerce/GP cities, building your necessary improvements with the whip (or, late in the game, with cash-rushing).

 

The big cost of whipping is really the happiness penalty. If your city is near its happiness cap, you need to have a plan to deal with the additional angry citizens. The nice thing is that if whatever you're whipping would have a positive happiness effect (temple, garrison units in Hereditary Rule, forge w/ a jewelry resource, etc.), the conversion of food to hammers is essentially free.

[Atreides]

Site of Port Avellone

What's the benefits of the site of Port Avellone? Besides the coast, river and the cows, a bunch of forests it doesn't seem to have lots of resources.

 

Wouldn't a site a little to the right be better, to take advantage of the rice? But we'd lose the river though...

[Kissamies]

There's cows and there's wheat, though shared with Crossroads Keep. Good land, though you need to chop jungles first. Maybe it's not so good initially, but with some improvement and when dikes become available, it will be pretty snazzy. Not a bad possibility for GP farm, as Enoch said. There's plenty of room for other city for the rice futher east.

[Pidesco]

Is Steve up next?

 

 

Also, if you want to join in Kissamies, go ahead.

[Enoch]

There's plenty of room for other city for the rice futher east.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Before drawing my initial dotmap, I debated whether to have 2 spaced-out cities or 3 tightly-packed cities along our southern coast. I decided on the latter, because it's all good land, and keeping the cities tight makes it more likely that we'll be working all of the high-value tiles all of the time. (I especially like to have 2 cities sharing food resources-- it will often be the case that one of them will be at its happiness cap, at which point you can switch it to help growth in the other one.) The easternmost city could be a decent production center. Between the rice, lots of hills, the Moai Statues, and a Dike, it should be able to make most of our navy for us.

 

 

On an unrelated note, I played the opening of a fun game as Ghandi this weekend. Executed a lovely axe-rush against Augustus Ceasar to eliminate him before he was able to make any of those nasty Prats. (I noticed that he lacked Copper or Horses, so I put the rush together to try to wipe him out before he got the chance at Iron.) It's a Monarch-level game, but I got a very very kind starting position-- with one move of my initial settler, I got 2 Gold resources in my capitol's workable area. That kind of start is almost like playing the next level down. Still, this particular game has helped me improve my early rush technique. You've got to recognize when the situation is ripe for a rush, and then go for it full-bore. As it was, Augie had researched Iron Working and got his iron on-line a few turns before my stack arrived at the gates of Rome. Any further delay would've been disastrous. Luckily, he had only used his Iron to rush-build 2 Axemen (with no promotions and little fortification bonus), which my City Raider 1 Axemen took care of surprisingly well.

[Atreides]

You should declare war on the world.

[Kissamies]

Also, if you want to join in Kissamies, go ahead.

Thanks, but I think I rather stay on advisary role at this point. It makes me look smart without risks. Maybe later after the war. Oh and whatever the next player(s) do, don't raze Babylon. It seems to have some nice wonders. Rename it to Sigil or something after capture.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Is Steve up next?

 

 

Also, if you want to join in Kissamies, go ahead.

Earliest I can make it is Thursday, so someone else should take the next turn if possible.

 

Go on, Kissamies, you know you want to...

[Kissamies]

Very well, you conviced me. My screenies got corrupted for some reason, but I made some notes:

 

159 - Must get macemen right now. Got Civil Service for Machinery from Elizabeth.

160 - Build 7 triremes quest. Don't think it's worthwhile. Our glorious armies conquered Babylon in a near-suicidal charge. Lost the catapults, but otherwise the army performed well. One axemen unit that won against the odds got renamed Vault Dwellers. The city was later renamed as Urquhartburg.

163 - Zara Yaqob no longer wants our horses. Got him to take gold instead. We need that silk to keep our people happy and productive for the war.

165 - Great Library of Peragus is finished and the city can go back to pumping out military units.

166 - Switched to Free Religion. Should make the hindus less annoyed of us and I like that civic.

169 - Lost 2 units in a foolish expedition to cut off their horses. Should just have kept using that spy to do that.

174 - Tech trade with Zara Yaqob. Philosophy and Drama for Guilds... Trying to get Liberalism first here.

175 - A Great Artist was born at Peragus. Sent to culture bomb Urquhartburg.

 

Might have played 1 round too many, but it's beginning of round and units are not moved. Continued the plan to make Port Avellone a GP farm.

God_Emperor_Feargus_AD_1190.zip

Edited October 24, 2007 by Kissamies

[Oerwinde]

It might be my rookie playstyle again, but I find Free Religion isn't that great in the early game. The building or XP benefits of Organized or Theocracy help in your expansion, then you can switch later for the happiness boost when you simply need to maintain your empire. (I tend not to wage war too much later)

[Pidesco]

I don't like the use of Free Religion this early, either. Even if you're playing a peaceful game(and we're not), Free Religion should be the last religious civic we use, and only after we put out as many GPs as we can with the help of Pacifism.

[Kissamies]

Well yeah, could have switched to Confucianism and then to Theocracy... but as I said, I like that civic. I've always been a science hog in these games and even the tiny 10% feels appealing. Might be better to do pacifism and get GP to lightbulb techs, but I'm too lazy to micromanage all the specialists. There's also the happiness thing and not making all the hindus so angry as I said. Better to fight them one at the time.

[Enoch]

FR isn't bad at this point. It wipes out the diplo penalties, and IIRC, we really don't have one religion spread to all our cities, so the benefits of the other religion civics would be pretty spotty anyway.

[Kissamies]

Actually Ethiopian missionaries have been busy and we do have one religion in our cities. I sometimes try to get 3 or more religions to bigger cities if I have spare resources to spend on missionaries. Maybe another reason I like FR so much.