[Civ 4] Succession Game 3 - Page 14

On July 03 2010 20:09 Monsen wrote:
Wasted waaaaaaaaaaaay too much time on the "mass expansion" idea (which isn't a smart move anyway- maintainance will kill you) instead of Pret rushing the hell out of 3-4 neighbours and securing their lands for later expansion (when you can actually afford to have more than 3-4 cities).

Get Iron ASAP. ignore everything else. Pump prets from 2 cities (preferably with baracks) conquer the good (and close !!!) shit (pyramids are sweeeeeeet), sack the rest.

On July 05 2010 01:43 Manit0u wrote:


Basically, that's what should be done and wasn't. By rolling JC you are BOUND to use the biggest advantage you can get in the early to mid game, which is Praetorians, and use it to eliminate at least one opponent pre-medieval era (before longbowmen kick in for good) and grab his lands. It's best done with 2-3 cities. What we got was 4-5 cities with sub-optimal (or rather, very bad) placement and didn't rush for Praets, missing our window of opportunity and losing at least 40-50 turns during which we would steamroll everything.

Consider it a timing attack that sets you up into a better position for later stages of the game.

On July 06 2010 16:19 igotmyown wrote:

Blaming it on Rapid Expansion is highly inaccurate. If you're last in score midgame below deity, you're not expanding correctly.

I think the biggest problem was when one guy built a bunch of units, then the next guy deleted them.

On July 06 2010 14:58 Biochemist wrote:
I started playing:

1. Was doing a good job carving up hannibal with my awesome hero elephant/knight/maceman army.
2. Captured Carthage, another city on the coast, and then the city the capital relocated to when I took carthage.
3. Saladin declared war, and within two turns had four cities captured.
4. Reloaded a few turns back, switched to Buddhism so Saladin wouldn't declare.
5. Mansa declares, invades with fucking infantry. Longbows aren't going to do much here.

Seriously, can you guys not leave the bottom-of-the-scoreboard team alone so we can actually focus our efforts somewhere useful?

Now I don't have the energy to keep going, and it's late. I'm going to bed.

On July 07 2010 19:18 Monsen wrote:


I'm pretty sure the best way to "expand" with the romans isn't building 5 cities early game.

On July 06 2010 15:09 Manifesto7 wrote:
For people that like reading this kind of stuff, civfanatics has tons and tons of these games. You just have to learn the language.

Example: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=197818

at the bottom of the guide.

On July 08 2010 02:54 Ver wrote:
I took over the game from the last save and were it not for the terrible vassal system being used, the game would've been easily winnable. The problems were twofold: first Hannibal always vassaled out to someone before he could be conquered more fully, and can't be vassalized because our score was too low. I managed to conquer 4 cities before Churchill picked him up. Even though he only had 4 cities left his culture presence was so dominating that the new cities could barely be used and they had homeland penalties since he wasn't wiped out.

That in itself is not gamebreaking, but the problem was the Gandhi, vassal of Churchill. Gandhi was going culture and a.i culture will always be faster than space and requires nukes/attacking to stop unlike space which can be indefinitely delayed via espionage. Churchill was the strongest a.i by far from the start and only got stronger due to more vassals. The only way to stop Gandhi was to enter a war with Churchill (or have someone else cripple him, which didn't happen). Civ has apparently been patched frequently so I can't believe they never fixed the problem that an a.i would assure itself of a loss by vassaling a civ going culture, if not remodel the vassal system to prevent that from occurring.

After much time spent rebuilding from the horrible early position I managed to jump from the Renaissance to the Future in a few turns after saving up lots of EP thanks to Mansa Musa and espionage cost reduction. It wouldn't have been too hard keeping Mansa (had all techs) and Saladin (needed some time to tech) off of space victory with espionage (Churchill was behind having spent most of the game warring, Napoleon was defeated in war), but stopping Gandhi's culture seems impossible since either nukes or capturing means having to declare on Churchill. By the time that was remotely possible Gandhi was about to win, so I called it quits.

So far as I can see the only way to win is for Napoleon + allies to beat Churchill + allies so Gandhi doesn't have the most powerful empire in the game covering his victory. Unfortunately I don't see how that could really be arranged other than RNG or Saladin (liked Churchill) somehow joining in on Napoleon's side. I was virtually a bystander for most of the game as the tech deficit severely limited diplo options until Churchill was too big to matter anyways.

Summary: Vassals are cool in theory but implemented very poorly.

Would certainly be curious to see if anyone had success with another approach since it was hard to decide things at several points and I'm certain my playthrough could be optimized a fair bit more. Not sure if it would matter though given the situation unless there's a way to get the world vs Churchill fairly early on.