Epic Forty: The Hittite Cosmonauts

[Caesar_Augustus]

Originally posted by Kylearan@May 5 2004, 08:19 AM
I really like your enhanced picture, although they take a while to load on my slow dial-up connection.

Yeah, it took my slow dial-up connection a while to upload them too! I had never made an animated .GIF before and was curious to try out Animation Shop. They weren't perfectly put together but they were still fun to make. For the Laomedon/Maya Settler dance .GIF I wanted to put a picture of Smoke Jaguar's face in the corner, morphing from happy to angry as I poached his city spot :laugh: , but I didn't get around to it.

[Sir Bugsy]

They were legal settlements. For example in Hubishna between the Mayans and the Ottomans, I settled it well before the AI got into the neighborhood, but because of corruption, I didn't get enough culture there early enough. That combined with aggressive settling put the squeeze on those cities. I can some screenshots off the replay.

I'm glad you enjoyed my report. From all the enjoyment I've gotten out of Sirian's Great Library, it is hardly an even trade though.

[Bede]

Don't know if I missed the deadline but here's the long and the short of it.

With great plans for the building of a commercial and scientific powerhouse despite the restrictions of the variant. my settler moved downriver and built the capital on the coast. Harry the worker set out to irrigate the grasslands and the intrepid scout set forth to wander the land.


The scouts (one built first thing in the capital) produced all the first level techs and the research path was down to philosophy in a big hurry. Meanwhile a doughty curragh was checking out the coastlines while the capital built three settlers and their complement of guardians. Chose Map Making as the free technology and built the Great Lighthouse in the capital. Science was kept at a minimum except the max run at Philosophy and the scouts and trading with the Maya and the Ottomans kept kept the nation wealthy and abreast of the techology race on the island. The galleys which followed the Lighthouse build got me in touch with the rest of the world very quickly.

And that was the last thing that went as planned.

Never got more than four cities built and had to fight a war with the Maya to even get a chance at iron which didn't get hooked up until the Middle Ages, the beginning of the end.

The Ottomans and the Maya had me pinned against the coast, the jungles and the mountains. I had built two cities, one south, and one west of the capital, which were trapped in the jungle and mired in the marshes and I sited my fourth and last town on the wines hill on the wrong side of the river, so that any attempts to send troops at the Maya and the Ottomans stalled at the river crossing leaving them exposed.

At any rate, long about 400AD the Japanese sailed by and demanded some wines. For some reason I refused and that was that. Using Oriental guile and trickery the Japanese brought in both the Mayans and the Ottomans. The Japanese landed exactly one MDI whcih pillaged my wines in the east and then watched as the Mayas' and Ottomans' MDI, knights and Ancient Cavalry whipped my warriors and chariots and spears and archers to bits. (I never was able to build more than one MDI and never built a sword because the iron came so late. There was a stack of warriors awaiting upgrade but I couldn't afford it.)

By 300AD I was reduced to my capitol and in 350AD the last hammer blow fell delivered by a Mayan mace wielder.

:axe:

Failing to push out into the eastern lands was my undoing. Instead of making peace with the Maya once the iron was within the borders I should have pushed on to the east along the coast but I never took full advantage of the Chariots while I had them and didn't keep making settlers to push at the Maya borders while I had the opportunity. The nations in the west never developed into serious trading partners as they seemed to be constantly at war with each other and remained ignorant and too poor to do anything about it, even though I was more than willing and able to help them along. Spending the capitol's resources on the Colussus and the Lighthouse was another major misstep as the Colussus kicked off a Golden Age when I couldn't really do anything meaningful with it and settlers and military would have served me better than the two monuments.

Fun while it lasted, though.

[Sir Bugsy]

Good effort Brother Bede. Sorry to hear it went south on you. I don't feel so bad about giving in to all the demands Osman made of me.

[Justus_II]

Sounds like a valiant try. Glad to see I wasn't the only one to go for MapMaking as my free tech. (Of course, I never had any curraghs, as I didn't settle a coastal city until I almost had Philosophy... :rolleyes I think you're right about the wonders, though. I had wanted to build a couple early ones, specifically Lighthouse, but with the restrictions on city placement, there was always somewhere else I needed to settle first, so my coastal city kept dropping in priority.

[Bede]

Not only the game but the report. Both are models to follow.

[Bede]

I loved the tale.

[Sir Bugsy]

I went back to the last autosave to generate the replay. I've cut and pasted six significant dates together.


In 1350 BC, you can see my northeast coastal site.

In 590 BC, you can see Hubishna down by the ivory.

In 530 BC and 250 BC, you can see how Hubishna is starting to get crowded out.

Additionally in 250 BC, you can see my incense city.

320 AD, sees the founding of my 14th city.

Hopefully, this helps answer some questions. I also have some saves available.

[Rik Meleet]

Must not have been a pleasant game for you. Just as you calmed down the wars on your continent, the Japanese re-kindle them. I would have pulled my hair out of frustration that I wasn't allowed to play the game as I'd wanted, instead pulled into domino-war.

The more reports I read the more convinced I become I made the right choices of ignoring some bits I usually don't. I didn't build a granary in my capital because I couldn't build many workers nor settlers.

I ignored the Lighthouse early on and didn't build the Great Lighthouse anywhere, at least not seriously. I used it as a prebuild for Knights Templar. I was lucky I had met the other continent so it wasn't needed for exploration, and it didn't matter who build it for trade.

I caved in into demands a lot even very late in the game. Simply because of the "no attacking cities if your #1 in land" stops my style of effective warfare.

I didnt go barb-hunting as vicious as I normally do. I wouldn't have the room nor time to settle cities in the free areas so I would just help the Mayas and the Otto's if I'd did. In fact; for a long time a SoD of about 25 horsemen camped right outside my horse-city, which was defended by a 3/3 warrior, they didn't bother me; I didn't bother them. Peaceful-coexistence.

I purposely played the Western Continent in such a way that we would have a big dog there; Babylonians. That way I would always be number 2 in teritory so I could attack Mayan and Ottoman cities if they'd been annoying again. A result of this was that the Babylonians had a higher score than I did.

I mass-gifted scientific civs into new ages to get a reduced price on techs. This worked magnificently as the Babs were more interested in warring than in getting the tech-lead, but it was risky. A runaway civ is easily made this way.

[Justus_II]

Originally posted by Rik Meleet@May 8 2004, 06:37 AM
I mass-gifted scientific civs into new ages to get a reduced price on techs. This worked magnificently as the Babs were more interested in warring than in getting the tech-lead, but it was risky. A runaway civ is easily made this way.

Very true. I had the same concern, but in my game it was the Ottoman. They weren't likely to become a runaway, but were certainly more powerful militarily than I was during the Middle and early Industrial ages, and I was debating whether getting their free tech into play was worth the price of boosting them into a new era. This time it mostly worked, until they demanded Fission, which I would have sold anyway, as I needed Uranium.

One lesson I have learned about the tech-gift gambit, is to make sure once you have done all the gifting, and it's time to buy the techs, ALWAYS use Tech/GPT, not Cash. I had a game where I had gifted several civs into the Modern Age, and only one (Greece) got Computers, which I wanted, so I paid them some luxuries and 10,000 gold cash. Within 3 turns, they had spend 3,000 of it rushing units, and declared war on me!!! I've decided that giving cash to AIs is giving gasoline to a pyromaniac and will always try to structure it into some form of GPT if I can, even if I have the cash available. The temptation for them to rush stuff, then find someone to use it on, is too much.