ID's HoF writeups

[IglooDude]

Large/Noble/Normalspeed/BtS3.02 SpaceRace win submitted 26Aug07:

In as Julius, as usual. Praets for the easy early expansion. My first (deliberate) space race, my first HoF BtS game.

(More on this to follow later, but I'm submitting the game now.)

[IglooDude]

I was able to ramp up praets early and took out Monty (I think it was Monty - maybe Inca?) and the Chinese quick. I got Alphabet quick enough and did the initial burst of tech trades, but BtS seems to keep the AI from wanting to trade a second round. Anyway I turned Rome into a military production powerhouse, and Monty's capital became my GP farm; Parthenon, Great Library, forum, and I was popping great scientists like crazy. Made it to Liberalism first, too. I managed to get Versailles and the Forbidden Palace in the northeast and southeast respectively, which got my economy back on track.

Whereas ordinarily I'd have just continued pushing, I stopped advancing militarily once I ran up against Bismarck, Hannibal, and Zara Yaqob's borders - I had plenty of population for research/production, and didn't want to come close to the %land domination limit. But I also didn't want to lose via Apostolic Palace - I'd been watching them (Zara and Gilgamesh) initiating all sorts of wars and blockades and such all game so far, and was reading that there's a diplo victory vote possible. So, I attacked Zara with a goal to raze the AP city (and knock him back a bit). Gilgamesh DoW'ed me due to defense pact.

Except that I'd gotten the idea in my head that AP was in the confucian holy city (which Zara owned). Only a turn after I razed it and a vote passed in the AP to stop making war on the believers, which caused Gilg and I to be at peace (but the war with Zara was still on). Very very odd. Anyway, I realized that the AP was in Hannibal's capital. I razed Zara's capital and another city for good measure, then got peace with him. And then went after Hannibal, and got to and razed his capital, then made peace with him too.

At this point it was pretty much clear sailing to the finish line. I kept up an occasional war with each AI in turn mostly for gold from city-razing and town pillaging and to prevent any AI from having any hope of catching up (in particular, I figured AI ICBMs were the only thing that could possibly slow me down). Beijing with an Ironworks, every hammer-helping building in the book and then Three Gorges and the Space Elevator was the primary spaceship city and a couple other cities were doing ~200hammers/turn at the end as well. Also once the ship was launched I whipped up some ICBMs and nuked Hannibal because he was annoying, and because I'd heard that they nerfed nukes somewhere along the way. They haven't. But tactical nukes with a 4-square range are just about useless, as are cruise missiles for the same reason.

As I've not played for a space race victory before (even on previous Civ4 versions) I can't really compare that bit, but while espionage is potentially powerful, I didn't make much effective use of it. Ditto corporations (I only started one after the spaceship was launched) though using a great engineer to start the construction corp in Beijing got it something like 27 more hammers per turn, at some cost in gold.

[grahamiam]

For space race HoF, you should really make sure you have AI's that can research. 3 warring AI's probably slowed down your game a bit. Who were the other civ's?

[IglooDude]

quote:Originally posted by grahamiam

For space race HoF, you should really make sure you have AI's that can research. 3 warring AI's probably slowed down your game a bit. Who were the other civ's?

I usually set it on random, with the max allowed # of AI civs (large map, 13 other civs).

Alex and Genghis were the other surviving civs, besides the ones mentioned above. In BtS the AIs aren't very eager to trade techs much, and as an overall strategy I figured that going alone while having 50% of the world's population (and a whole bunch of libraries and such) with most cities building research and going at an 80% tech rate would be faster in the end than racing along with the AIs but having to accomodate them.

[killercane]

It will be interesting to see Pericles in action. You mentioned espionage; I wonder what the cost/benefit analysis of stealing techs is throughout the middle ages and renaissance?

[grahamiam]

Well, they can help research some old stuff while you beeline for Liberalism. Having Mansa (for research) and some solid financial AI's (Elizabeth, Washington, Victoria) for gold selling can help you get your sci rate up to 100% for most of the game. Some insane AI's are good for proxy wars or to allow you to expand and "help" your preferred civs (thus easing the trading).

I did the BTS-1 HoF (some easy setting), 1st game was with a decent start and random leaders. 2nd game (which I didn't finish), was with a good gold start and preferred leaders. Research time was greatly improved and I was actually able to trade for early stuff rather than waste 2 or 3 turns of research. YMMV

[grahamiam]

Oh, and I used Sid's Sushi in the 2nd game, while in the 1st I have the mining company. I must say, Sid's Sushi is very powerful. I was running 100% research and still doing +40gpt