08-02-2004 10:37									#181
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Good idea. I now have cash from th nice Arabians. I am at peace now with all. That is why it seems wrong that the game allows the Celts to hit me with privateers that are operating in and out of their ports in plain site. If they were on the high seas, ok, but inside the Celts borders and even stacked upon their ships? I think we all know the AI would sink them, if they were not theirs.

I should have thought of that, but went brain dead, plus I had no cash until now. Thanks.

	08-02-2004 12:23									#182
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quote: Originally posted by vmxa1 Drachen this is what I worry about, the numbers that can be tossed at you. In my case I will be using older units and face better ones for the most part.

I've given up on this game I'm afraid. Not that the game over screen has come up but I've been doing some restarts to see what happens when I follow different paths so no legit win is possible. I’m going to keep on playing though because I’m learning a lot. The Sumerians just finished The UN and have had the SETI wonder for some time. I've been at peace for 20 turns to honor a deal with the Inca which I had to get due to WW. This is a screenshot after 1 1/2 turns of war which I declared. In that time I decimated the Incan army, took “relatively” few casualties, and kept my beachhead city. Luxury slider is at zero but even so this is absurd. The number of units you have to use makes WW a real problem for Republics.

	08-02-2004 15:17									#183
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quote: Originally posted by vmxa1 I just noticed I am in danger of getting a culture loss. I have about 39K and they have 83K with nearly all the wonders.

I don't recall ever seeing a culture loss...........83K already.

	08-02-2004 22:46									#184
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quote: Originally posted by DrSpike I don't recall ever seeing a culture loss...........83K already.

Once the Celts went off on the Arabs and Incas and booted them off the contient, they had more land than I did.

They had built most of the wonders in the middle ages and captured a lot of the ancient era ones. They got libs and then uni's before I had libs. I could not even afford to build libs in many cities as I needed to build troops to fight Korea.

Sid can be a real pain with the research at a cost 4 factor. The AI gets everything dirt cheap and no support cost to speak of.

	08-02-2004 23:00									#185
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This brings up the idea of what is a valid game setting for a Sid run and what do people think would be needed to make it possible to win. Ok, ignoring the fact that the tactics and execution were not exactly flawless.

Drachen's game could go down with a vote and mine with culture, should we have to have them enabled?

What about map settings and the number of civs?

I went with a std map and roaming barbs with temp climate and 4B years old.

Would changing any of these make a difference and is so which ones and would it be a valid test then?

I would think the climate and the age would make little difference, but could aid some civs. No game breaker though.

Barbs, if it was set to none, my help the player and surely hurt the expansion civs.

Map size by itself should not matter, but if in conjunction with the number of civs and water/land ratios could be a factor.

I went with 70% water and contients as a non seafaring civ, that seemed to not be a helping hand.

I have ignored any tweaks to the map via the editor as that is surely going to invalidate any attempt. But I was wndering if something like changing the resource frequency would be an issue?

	08-02-2004 23:09									#186
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My take is editing anything is a nono. Picking whatever settings you want is fine, since people will not agree it's best to just declare them.

Ultimately cooking the settings is no worse than playing a standard map and restarting until you get a good start.

	08-02-2004 23:15									#187
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we need to have a thread based solely on cooking, what is considered cooking and what is considered game startup options.

I think turning off culture flipping is one of the larger cooks that you can do, but i do it quite often ) I think that any map type and size is fine, but if you cut out more than 3 or 4 players standard and up, you can get a much easier time of it.

turning off vic's I don't know how I feel. I usually play wihtout diplo on.

	09-02-2004 00:16									#188
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quote: Originally posted by DrSpike My take is editing anything is a nono. Picking whatever settings you want is fine, since people will not agree it's best to just declare them. Ultimately cooking the settings is no worse than playing a standard map and restarting until you get a good start.

I suspect most players will agree that edited maps are not legitimate unless perhaps it’s an AU map designed to teach rather than benefit the player. I’m less concerned with restarting to get a good location as long as you say so up front. I know a number of people won’t agree but is it really necessary to play out 20 bad starts you know you’re unlikely to win? I also agree that we’re unlikely to get everyone to agree on just what is legitimate but wouldn’t it be beneficial to get some sense of what the majority of players would agree upon? After all, some people take cooking to whole new levels and winning those games isn’t considered a win at all by most players.

	09-02-2004 00:28									#189
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quote: Originally posted by asleepathewheel we need to have a thread based solely on cooking, what is considered cooking and what is considered game startup options. I think turning off culture flipping is one of the larger cooks that you can do, but i do it quite often ) I think that any map type and size is fine, but if you cut out more than 3 or 4 players standard and up, you can get a much easier time of it. turning off vic's I don't know how I feel. I usually play wihtout diplo on.

If you want to start a new thread I’ll post there but I think this thread might be OK because it’s the settings for SID that are in question. To start, what would be legitimate settings for setup screen 1? My current feeling is that any settings are legitimate except “No Barbarians” if any of your rivals are going to be expansionist since this removes most of the benefit of that trait. Other settings may increase the value of certain traits but it doesn’t destroy the value of the other traits and so I don’t have a problem with that.

	09-02-2004 00:29									#190
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I wouldn't relish trying to win on Sid in a republic.

	09-02-2004 00:31									#191
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Drachen: As I said any settings are fine IMO as long as they are declared. I take the point about providing opinions as guidelines. Hence, I'll suggest IMO turning off victory conditions is questionable, as is picking too few civs. Turning flipping off is probably a little too artful, but having lost a core city not far from my capital to a flip in a Deity game I would understand it.

	09-02-2004 00:41									#192
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quote: Originally posted by jimmytrick I wouldn't relish trying to win on Sid in a republic.

The hammer can drop at any moment due to The UN but I can't change that so I'll keep on playing and try to change my government instead. Probably wait for Communism although being a boot stomping Fascist might be interesting.

If you’ve got the time to post I’d be interested in reading how your tech stealing attempts went.

	09-02-2004 01:11									#193
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My interest is to hear what people feel is not kosher in the settings.

I do not know if or how many civs being left out of a map is unfair.
That is what I was hoping to hear about, how many and why.
I mean, is 6 out of 8 ok? What about 5, 4.....

For the record I suspect that you cannot win with culture turned on at Sid in a std map regardless of the rest. Well if at least 5 civs are in the game.

BTW I just got handed my noticed. Yup culture defeat, dam. I think I had finally got to a point where I had a shot.
I was railing my lands from the edge all around and was well under way. I had a few facotries under way. One city that I took from Korea was building Iron Works. I had finished the Military Acad to allow replacing some of my older armies.

I had sacked all but one Inca city. I was going toward India.

The scary thing is that the Inca people had Police Stations in the last city I captured? They had been down to 4 cities for so long, but still stayed ahead of me in tech. India was not able to stay ahead and they had lots of cities?

Anyway I am tempted to play on to see how it may have gone. I have a lunch date with one of grand daughters now, so I will think about it.

	09-02-2004 01:11									#194
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quote: Originally posted by Drachen If you want to start a new thread I’ll post there but I think this thread might be OK because it’s the settings for SID that are in question. To start, what would be legitimate settings for setup screen 1? My current feeling is that any settings are legitimate except “No Barbarians” if any of your rivals are going to be expansionist since this removes most of the benefit of that trait. Other settings may increase the value of certain traits but it doesn’t destroy the value of the other traits and so I don’t have a problem with that.

I agree with you on the world set up screen, everything is fair game, other than no barbs. And if you are going to have random as your enemies, its just luck of the draw if someone gets screwed, you really don't have control over it.

The second screen is where you can dramatically increase your odds.

What I find to be dubious:
no culture flipping
selection of specific AI civs (ie no scientific, no expansionist, no seafaring would make the game much easier)
selection of say half the number of allowed civs per map size. though you could get screwed by this as well, probably helps the player much more than the ai
any of the fancy victories, ie elimination, princess, etc. ai can't handle it.

I'm not sure but I don't think that accellerated production would cook it.
Ditto on changing the aggression levels. (not enough personal experience manipulating it) Max the aggression level might lead to no infrastructure but dangerous early wars. Min the ag level might lead to little unit numbers but high infra. Just not sure of the effects. My guess is that each game would be different using it, so too difficult to guarantee an easier game through it.

I personally turn off cultural linkage and respawn civ. Don't think those would make it easier, well perhaps the latter, just lead to more varied games.

preserve random seed: I keep on, but it probably doesn't change anything unless you are a mass reloader anyway and hence wouldnt care about cooking.


The big one of course is the vic options. I think everyone understands why diplo and others would be turned off, so as long as its stated its ok in my book. Getting a space race vic or otherwise on Sid is impressive enough, and since the vics would probably come around the same time frame, not that consequential. Who knows.

	09-02-2004 01:13									#195
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quote: Originally posted by Drachen The hammer can drop at any moment due to The UN but I can't change that so I'll keep on playing and try to change my government instead. Probably wait for Communism although being a boot stomping Fascist might be interesting. If you’ve got the time to post I’d be interested in reading how your tech stealing attempts went.

I posted a little on my Sumerian game at Civfanatics.

I missed the GL but was lucky enough to capture it to get in good tech shape. If it had not been on my continent I would have lost out of hand. I researched alphabet, traded for writing and masonry and started a palace prebuild for the library. I missed by about 5 turns and ended up with a FP 2 tiles from my capital (v1.12 game).

I stopped research then and after I captured the Library I did a one scientist 50 turn gambit on metallurgy. But I stolen that tech (immediately). I was running Monarchy at 10.0.0.

I then stole military tradition from the tech leader (carefully) and traded for TOG, Mag, and Physics. This jumped me to the IA and I got Steam. Tech is pretty cheap to steal and you can turn around and sell what you can't trade and end up with a good income.

I stole nationalism and traded for medicine then started sanitation@50turns. Stole electricity and replaceable parts. All these steals were made "safely". I could have triggered war somewhere but I was lucky I guess. Now I have mobilized and am collecting MGL and armies.

I researched only two techs in the game thus far and have not built any culture or research buildings except for a few libraries to expand borders. I built these instead of temples because, being scientific, it was cheaper.

	09-02-2004 01:17									#196
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quote: Originally posted by DrSpike Drachen: As I said any settings are fine IMO as long as they are declared. I take the point about providing opinions as guidelines. Hence, I'll suggest IMO turning off victory conditions is questionable, as is picking too few civs. Turning flipping off is probably a little too artful, but having lost a core city not far from my capital to a flip in a Deity game I would understand it.

The trouble is that with all victory conditions enabled I can’t see how a person could win. That may be the point though as default setting SID may be so difficult that it’ll take some time to figure out how to beat it if it hasn’t been done yet and I don’t know if it has been cracked since I haven’t seen anything about the game settings of the few SID wins I’ve heard about. So, I’m not sure about the victory conditions yet. That said I’ll take a shot at some of the setup screen 2 settings. Play any tribe you want and pick any rivals you want. On standard maps and larger I don’t have a problem with adding or subtracting one opponent. I looked at a number of maps generated by the editor and with one less opponent on a standard map you’ve got roughly a 1/3 chance of getting your own archipelago island and that opens up a GL build gambit. It just seems likely that not having a bit of space to expand into without rivals will mean that all games will have to be based on early warfare and while Vmxa1 has shown that that tactic can be very successful, nonetheless, I wouldn’t vote to have that be the only gambit available to us. I haven’t looked at editor maps using large and huge maps and so I don’t know how adding or subtracting rivals affects available gambits.

	09-02-2004 01:29									#197
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Thanks for the quick response Jimmytrick. I think I'll have a crack at this tech stealing business.

	09-02-2004 01:54									#198
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quote: Originally posted by vmxa1 My interest is to hear what people feel is not kosher in the settings. For the record I suspect that you cannot win with culture turned on at Sid in a std map regardless of the rest. Well if at least 5 civs are in the game. BTW I just got handed my noticed. Yup culture defeat, dam. I think I had finally got to a point where I had a shot.

That’s a shame Vmxa1. Great game though! I think that theoretically there may be a way to win with both Diplomatic and Cultural victory conditions on. If the late game has 3 tribes left then both AI’s are likely to be well ahead of you and so one of them would need to have your vote for a Diplomatic win. Also, IIRC the tribe getting to the required cultural level overall must have double the culture of it’s nearest rival as well. If that’s true then the runner up AI might have enough culture to prevent #1 from winning. That still leaves the 20,000 for one city problem so can you tell how much culture the Celts best city had?

	09-02-2004 02:00									#199
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That does suck.

Maybe some proactive diplomacy would help. When I see a civ about to get steamrolled, I will sometimes gift techs and resources to bring them closer to parity. (unless of course Ihave designs on their territory in the near future) It rarely works, but it can slow down the KAI somewhat. If only you could gift units The problem on sid is if you are behind the whipee in techs and can't help them out that way.

	09-02-2004 02:28									#200
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Hard luck Vmxa.........nice to stay in so long though.

	09-02-2004 02:31									#201
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quote: Originally posted by asleepathewheel What I find to be dubious: selection of specific AI civs (ie no scientific, no expansionist, no seafaring would make the game much easier) I'm not sure but I don't think that accellerated production would cook it.

There was a bit of discussion about Accelerated Production (AP) about halfway through this thread that you might want to have a look at. AP probably benefits the human player significantly and for me that’s a bit too much cooking.

As to the selection of opponents I think that’s open to a bit more discussion. You feel that certain traits are so strong that they must be included unless randomizing, but isn’t it a bit more map dependant? Do you feel, for instance, that playing against Japan, Aztecs, and Rome on a tiny Pangaea map wouldn’t be fair to the AI because they weren’t Seafaring or Expansionist?

	09-02-2004 02:49									#202
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quote: Originally posted by Drachen As to the selection of opponents I think that’s open to a bit more discussion. You feel that certain traits are so strong that they must be included unless randomizing, but isn’t it a bit more map dependant? Do you feel, for instance, that playing against Japan, Aztecs, and Rome on a tiny Pangaea map wouldn’t be fair to the AI because they weren’t Seafaring or Expansionist?

I feel that intentionally excluding certain traits is cooking. Such as selecting civs other than scientific, so there are no free era techs. Such as selecting a large pangea and excluding expansionist civs (and you being an exp civ). And yes this is map dependent in some cases. I wouldn't feel like I was cheating if I chose non exp on an 80% archipelago. I would if it were a pangea. I personally find seafaring to be great on any map, so if I excluded it intentionally it would lessen the victory for me.

Also I feel choosing civs based on their UU can be cooking, such as I don't want to deal with ancient defensive UUs. etc

In both of these situations, the reverse is also true, you can choose civs that would make the game much harder on you. I imagine a game with all ancient UUs would be more difficult than a game where you would see the americans and russians etc where their units on't come into play until much later in the game.

	09-02-2004 03:04									#203
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quote: Originally posted by jimmytrick I posted a little on my Sumerian game at Civfanatics. .

ltcoljt I presume?

	09-02-2004 04:45									#204
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Yeah. Lt. Col. jimmytrick

	09-02-2004 04:45									#205
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quote: Originally posted by Drachen That’s a shame Vmxa1. Great game though! I think that theoretically there may be a way to win with both Diplomatic and Cultural victory conditions on. If the late game has 3 tribes left then both AI’s are likely to be well ahead of you and so one of them would need to have your vote for a Diplomatic win. Also, IIRC the tribe getting to the required cultural level overall must have double the culture of it’s nearest rival as well. If that’s true then the runner up AI might have enough culture to prevent #1 from winning. That still leaves the 20,000 for one city problem so can you tell how much culture the Celts best city had?

Those strategies would not work for as I was solidly in second place with twice the score of the next civ.
In the begining, I felt the Inca would hold them and then maybe the Arabs, but they all got rolled.

	09-02-2004 04:50									#206
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quote: Originally posted by asleepathewheel That does suck. Maybe some proactive diplomacy would help. When I see a civ about to get steamrolled, I will sometimes gift techs and resources to bring them closer to parity. (unless of course Ihave designs on their territory in the near future) It rarely works, but it can slow down the KAI somewhat. If only you could gift units The problem on sid is if you are behind the whipee in techs and can't help them out that way.

That is exacly my problem. I could not help the Incas or the Arabs as they always had more tech than I had, right down to the day they disappeared.

They of course wouldnot do much of anything with me, even when I tried to help them. I mean I tried to give them back their cities and they would not do it, not even for me given them the city and additional stuff.

I could not make any alliances with them, nothing. Probably because I keep breaking my peace deals with the Koreans.
Oh and maybe a few razed cities here and there.

	09-02-2004 04:54									#207
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I think stealing techs is going to have to be part of Sid strategy but wars sometimes get in the way.

	09-02-2004 05:00									#208
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quote: Originally posted by asleepathewheel I feel that intentionally excluding certain traits is cooking. Such as selecting civs other than scientific, so there are no free era techs. Such as selecting a large pangea and excluding expansionist civs (and you being an exp civ). And yes this is map dependent in some cases. I wouldn't feel like I was cheating if I chose non exp on an 80% archipelago. I would if it were a pangea. I personally find seafaring to be great on any map, so if I excluded it intentionally it would lessen the victory for me. Also I feel choosing civs based on their UU can be cooking, such as I don't want to deal with ancient defensive UUs. etc In both of these situations, the reverse is also true, you can choose civs that would make the game much harder on you. I imagine a game with all ancient UUs would be more difficult than a game where you would see the americans and russians etc where their units on't come into play until much later in the game.

I tend to agree that using a pangea and then going expansionist and not allowing any other ones is too much. Not sure it would work, but it would seem to be an advantage.

I took 70% and not seafaring to ensure I was not being unfair.
I am not sure about the ancient UU's though. It could go either way. They would blow their GA very soon and the UU would not be the reason I died as they could do that without one.

One thing that happen in my game that may have hurt me is that I only had one civ on my land and the land was large. This let the AI get a massive jump on me and made contacts take longer for me.

It also make it less likely that I could capture any ancient wonder cities until it was too late to help.

The flipside is that maybe I would have been in even greater trouble sooner, I don't know.

The sad part is the Celts had finally traded me a lux for just a lux and 4 or 5 gpt.

	09-02-2004 05:08									#209
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quote: Originally posted by jimmytrick I think stealing techs is going to have to be part of Sid strategy but wars sometimes get in the way.

You are correct about the stealing, but it takes cash. The war does hurt production, not sure if that can be avoided though.

I am rethinking the plan to go to Monarchy as well. That form looked good to me as it has no WW and a bit better support if oyu have lots of cities.

The draw back is you can't afford to remove the MP's. I think now I should have gone to republic and either paid to support or trimmed back on the troops. Maybe just used them and replace them at a slower pace.

The WW was a red herring as I was not at war much at all after I dropped the Koreans. I got scared when the world was after me most of the ancient age and did not want to make peace.

After the Celt and the Arabs took a hit they made peace. By the time Korea was gone, I was strong enough that only the celts were a threat.

	09-02-2004 05:12									#210
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quote: Originally posted by DrSpike Hard luck Vmxa.........nice to stay in so long though.

Thanks, I think it was just that I wanted to see once and for all what it was about. It was interesting, but not fun.

It will be harder to hang in the next time, unless I can learn some better techniques.

I don't know if the heavy hitters are still struggling with it or aren't ready to shed some light on it for us peons.

Anyway thanks to all for the feedback. I bet Paddy is no longer wanting to see this in the story section.