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Old 23-05-2007, 19:42   #51
Kemal
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Netherlands.
Posts: 3,108
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Looking at population and empire size, indeed I agree one would expect me to be outproducing my opponents by a very large margin but the statistics tell a different story, I fear.



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When looking at mfg goods, Mali only outproduces the nearest opponent (Matrix) by a mere 33% for example, and probably almost has double the amount of hammers per turn than Darkness. This in itself kinda factors out the quick military conquest win since - especially attacking oversea areas - you're going to need a lot more armies than the enemy has, and be prepared to sustain heavy losses and still emerge victorious.

For example, the entire 14 cav campaign of the past few turns has taken a full 16 GA-turns to prepare, and that also had some element of surprise adding to the success. It would probably take at least 25 turns of full-blown military production to come up with another 14 cavs ready to be shipped again, and during that time Darkness's army will have grown as well.

Of course, this process could be sped up by drafting/whipping an army (a very strong strategy) but I already explained that I do not want to use that unless necessary, since I'm too much of a builder for that.

And it won't be necessary, because in this game, research is at this moment the driving force for Mali's success:


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GNP is almost 300% better than the nearest rival (which also happens to be a friendly AI), and considering that I do not doubt my current upkeep costs as well as the amount of commerce-enhancing improvements (market/grocer/obs/uni) is by far the biggest of all players, total science output is most likely even higher.

Therefore, what the future atm brings (a process that has been started after the GA finished) is that I'm going to translate this advantage to an overwhelming tech lead, which will result in vastly superior units eventually taking down the others one by one.

That sounds really good on paper, but it does mean a few more turns will pass without much real intense warfare (of course, the american patrols will always be standing by to do damage, but still I expect the next real war to be taking place with Matrix). While I'm very much enjoying seeing my own empire grow, maybe the others won;t be so happy... so a victory by resignation is what I would expect foremost. Else, it will probably be a military conquest, the spaceship in civ4 is way too far in techs to wait for. That could mean that I'll have to finish the game as a SP game, since I think at least one AI might survive the human opponents.

Concluding, since it was missing during the last major update, with the demographics, to help interpret the graphs:


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As for your final remark on how the empire has become what it is now... I'm not sure what to answer there, except that of course the very early extra worker taken from Rome was a great help in this particular game.
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