28-10-2002 14:20									#61
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Here's the last part of my struggle. I finished the game already Saturday, but had problems with 'Poly, so I played the whole rest of the weekend "1503 AD".

After Electricity I irrigated my few grasslands and plains. Now I had 2 or 3 halfway good cities (size 8-10 and producing somewhat 20 or 25 shields), but the rest was either large but unproductive (coastal cities) or small and productive (inland). I managed with ToE and a lot of trade to keep up in tech till the modern age. After I traded for Refining, I looked my cold empire. I expected oil in abundance, but surprisingly had only one source on my own territory. Another one I had on conquered Babylonian soil, but the only civ without oil was Russia, which was still in the medieval age.

I thought long about attacking Greece and did it not, for several reasons. First, Greece had taken the tech leadership and was my best trading partner and the strongest AI civ. Second, they had a very good economy, from former Babylon I could see lots of cavalries and later infantries (and not hoplites, Theseus) roaming. For me even lousy 20 cavalries (that's far from being enough) would be an effort of national dimension. So attacking them on their own turf looked not very inviting.

I was enforced to finish the Babylonian war in the mid of the industrial age. I was surprised, that it took so long with the war weariness. I fought the war as a Republic for a whole age. I didn't get a leader, and in the end even lost my last 2 elite knights to wounded musketmen (who sold Hammurabi that saltpeter, and with what did Hammurabi pay??? ). The Babylonian war had exhausted my scarce resources, so I took 2 of the remaining 3 cities and made peace for only a world map.

In the modern age my chances to keep up in tech vanished. I had size 7-10 cities, the AI's size 20-25 cities. Time to switch to plan B. I set science to 0 and most cities to Wealth. After I heard about other civs building the UN (which means they have Fission) I bought the tech and switched a prebuilt palace in one of my "productive cities" to the UN. Now I planted embassies everywhere and looked how far the enemy capitals are. Only one (Delhi) was dangerous, they needed 7 turns in their size 22 metropolis while my size 7 city still needed 9. The city had an almost full foodbox, so I added 4 workers to made it size 11. It starved, but could now complete the wonder in 6 turns.

One turn before the UN was ready (I was now sure to build it, due to the order the game handles turns and production), I opened again the "Babylonian question". The evil villain Saddam Hammurabi had violated the "no flight" zone with boomerangs and was told to develop WMDs (spiked clubs). This could not be tolerated. Just like it happens in real life ( ), I called the whole World to a cruisade against the evil Babylonian terrorists. And unlike in RL, all nations loved me for this. I got elected to be the UN secretary and here the game ended.

A pretty lame finish, ain't it? But hey, I said I'll win the game, I didn't say that I'm going to win a beauty contest with it. I don't know if with 0% science and a lot of prebuilds I could have won the space race. Maybe yes, maybe no. I didn't have the patience to check it, even more since a brand new game "1503 AD" was waiting on my desk. It's cool, although still buggy. MP comes as free patch in November. Sunflowers isn't Firaxis, so I think I can believe them.

Attachment: endgame.jpg
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	29-10-2002 01:42									#62
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

I cant stand the ICS-type strategies, didnt play em with SMAC (where I first heard of it here at poly), dont play em now. They're boring!

I play everything random. Prior to 1.29 I'd say my win % on monarch was 95 or so. Now I seem to have a much tougher time ,maybe 50%. The start positions are much tougher and the AI seems to sprout tech advances.

In my most recent game as Chinese the start site sucked, but it was better than the previous two starts wit all tundra or all mountain. I built colossus, hanging gardens (1st time, lost on race to GL), Sistine, and Hoover Dam. Helped eliminate the Germs and the Persians. Despite 50-50% science and attempts to trade I was (way) behind on tech for most of the game. I had two luxuries but no saltpeter, no oil, no horses, no coal. Careful defensive combat against much bigger civs and well timed MPP kept me in the game. Won by spacerace 2040 with like 12-1300 points. Yikes!

What is desperately needed is a way to generate GL without combat.

	29-10-2002 05:48									#63
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

100% for me so far. Mind you Ive only played one monarch game so far but won by a mile with spaceship.

	29-10-2002 13:17									#64
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

The American readers here get to wait until the first quarter of 2003 to enjoy 1503 AD. Hope Sunflowers and EA get most of the bugs out of it while they are getting the North American version done.

Its really frustrating that I can't even read about the game, 95% of the stuff I find on it is in German.

Hope you enjoy your anno version,
Alantus

	29-10-2002 18:07									#65
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

<THREADJACK>

quote: Originally posted by Alantus The American readers here get to wait until the first quarter of 2003 to enjoy 1503 AD. Hope Sunflowers and EA get most of the bugs out of it while they are getting the North American version done.

Most bugs concern units being stuck. For instance, I had a ship standing in front of my harbor. A bigger Venecian merchant ship came and pushed my ship to the side to get access to the harbor. Unfortunately, my ship ended on dry land and was unable to move anymore. Only the load/unload feature still worked, so at least the payload wasn't lost.

Or another bug: I had a swordsman walking on "go to" through my city. Unlike in the predecessor "1602AD", units walk through yards and gardens of the houses. So my swordsman walked through the garden of a "Settler" house. Unfortunately, the same time it upgraded to a "Citizen" house, the garden of which has no exit. So the poor man was stuck in the garden and I had either to knock down the house or to kill the soldier to solve this situation. And once my scout was stuck in the mountains.

A funny bug I saw was during a fire. The fire fighter rushed through the streets towards the burning house and collided with a market cart. The fireman died in the clash and I had again to knock down the house to hinder the fire to spread. Fortunately, in the next fire the fire department worked again, they must have more than one fireman .

But these bugs happen seldom and the situation usually can be easily solved. I'm sure this can and will be patched away.

quote: Its really frustrating that I can't even read about the game, 95% of the stuff I find on it is in German.

I have noticed this and must say, that I feel ashamed for the behavior of most of the German players. The forum itself is in English, but most threads and posts are in German. And when a dutch (?) poster asked to talk English please, he was flamed and literally asked either to learn German or to piss off. This can not be excused. It may be hard to write in English about a game, that even doesn't exist yet in English, and most of the German posters also seem to have problems with the English language, but they should at least try it.

Overall, the forum is full of beginner strategies, bug reports (always the same scheme, see above) and angry (but funny) comments about the game having included the hunting of whales and fur bearing animals. Not a big loss. Feel free to ask me for a summary, if you find something you don't understand.

quote: Hope you enjoy your anno version, Alantus

Thanks, greatly! Compared with "1602AD", the game offers a rich production tree, the schools and universities are researching new buildings and features, we have a lot of native cultures, like Eskimos, red Indians, Africans and Mongols, all with different buildings and a different behavior.

The music is sweet (about a dozen different songs), and the graphics awesome. We have different terrain, like ice, grassland, forest, plains, jungle, savannah and desert, all with different rocks and a different set of birds, animals and beasts of prey. For instance, in the savannah lions hunt zebras and antelopes and elephants walk majestic, in the jungle are tigers roaming and parrots flying, in the plains are buffalos (hunted by Indians), and in the grassland wolves, deers and rabbits.

Even my wife enjoyed to watch me playing, mainly for the cool graphics and music. That means a lot, considering that she's usually not into computer games, and doesn't like at all that other game... what was the name again? ... ah, Civ3!

</THREADJACK>

	30-10-2002 01:10									#66
	Increase Your PM Length

Theseus

Thanks.

On temples, I've been sold by all the comments above on the value of at least one early temple. Culture zooms very nicely. My civ gets more respect from neighboring AIs. I agree on comprehensive temple builds as a path to cathedrals once the first wars are won and that eventually expanding your cities' borders is necessary. Those builds and hill mining, etc., usually wait until the neighbors have been visited.


My general impression is that you guys are not as afraid of the AI as we newer players are. With that in mind, you are probably right that I'm excessively paraniod on the "settler in the attacking stack" issue, particularly once an early temple has been added to the plan. Arrian's temple pop technique is along the same lines as your comment on what to do with acquired cities. Vicious but practical.

	30-10-2002 02:04									#67
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Vicious but practical. Good description. In exchange for 2 poprushes (if religious) with a 10-turn wait inbetween them, I get a defender and a temple, which cancel out the effects of the rushing and at the same time work to prevent a flip. Then there is the addition to my overall culture. It's a no-brainer, really.

IIRC, my culture in AU201 (now in 560AD) is approximately equal the rest of the world combined (6 civs). That game was set up to be pretty easy, though, even on Emperor.

In a Monarch game, though, I would commonly have 1/3 to 1/2 of the world's total culture throughout the game (and end up with pretty much all of it).

Imagine what my civ's culture was like back when I was playing the Babs on Regent with the original poprush rules (39 shields for the first citizen). Temples and libraries rushed for 1 pop each after a 1 turn delay. Ahh, the Babylonian cultural masters...

-Arrian

	30-10-2002 15:06									#68
	Hey Sir Ralph Increase the size of your Attachments

Sir Ralph

I'm going to open a thread in the "Other Games" forum so we don't have to threadjack around here and suffer the deserved flames for doing so.

Thanks,
Alantus