Diplomatic Relations

Sowing the Seeds of Luv has arrived at an Industrial Age War. Mike and I started together on the same continent. Our first contact was cordial, and the common bond of Islam made for peaceful relations as we pursued our nation's destinies. It became clear that Mike's starting location was superior to mine, and his expansion strategy appears to be superior to mine as this is the second time he's out-built me on the same landmass. Somewhere in the middle ages he began to wildly out-tech me, and I watched as his score climbed well past mine. Unlike the last time we were neighbors, however, we continued on a friendly path and he was content to colonize his half of the continent while I tried to evict Sitting Bull and Bismarck from the rest of it.

That said, the Crusaders decreed Holy War on Mike, using the Christian Apostolic Palace to invoke war against the world's largest Islamic state. Our people were aghast at this treatment of our Brothers in Islam, and so in the name of Mohammed (PBUH) we joined in permanent alliance with the Mikeoneans and made our commitment to his defense public.

I spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not to engage in a formal alliance with Mike. I worry that other players will perceive it as unfair of me to do so...

But it isn't. The fact is, Mike and I both played the diplomatic route and maintained good relations with one another for the entire game - something all of us have done with computer opponents plenty of times. Moreover, the difference is in the method: is it any more or less fair or correct to coerce human players into cooperating you with threats and acts of force than it is to engender their cooperation with friendly diplomatic relations? Hell, if Mike or I was an AI, our diplomatic score would look like this:

+6 We care for our brothers and sisters of the faith.
+2 You gave us help.
+2 We appreciate the years you have supplied us with resources.
+1 Our open borders bring us closer together.
+1 You shared your technological advances with us.
+3 Our mutual military struggle brings us closer together.
+2 You have wisely chosen your Civics.
-1 Our close borders spark tensions.

So, yes. My peaceful, powerful, religious neighbor is attacked by the rest of the world. Of COURSE it is time for jihad. And perhaps if he's lucky, Milo will get the Global Warming he's been hoping for all along (nrc nrc nrc!). Unless of course Mike is abandoning the game, sticking me in a permanent alliance with an AI... :P

Everyone Cares (whether they want to or not)

Along with some of the others on this blog, this is my time playing civ multiplayer. I'm having a blast, and I've learned a lot. But I'd have to say my big takeaway from the experience so far would have to be:

When playing robots: Immediately send your warrior out looking for love huts.
When playing humans: NEVER, EVER, EVER leave your capitol undefended!

Seems pretty obvious. But let me just say the first time you find a band of club wielding care bares 2 turns from your precious, undefended capitol; you'll never forget it!

todb: StSoL First round

The settings for our third live multiplayer are:

Simultaneous Turns
Takeover AI
Choose Religions
Permanent Alliances
Large World
Custom Continents (4, Medium Sea Level, Cylindrical World Wrap)
Six Humans
Six AIs

I don't want to give away too much intel on my own civ just yet, but here are some mostly public info hilights:

* I started about two hours late, so I coopted an AI civ, basically at random. In this case, I've possessed the Dutch. In order to explain the sudden smartness and new dangerousness of the Dutch in-game, I've taken the role of "J'onn J'onzz," an otherworldly interloper and meddler in human affairs. (For reasons why this is appropriate see this Wikipedia article). Yeah, I'm a sucker for roleplaying in boardgames.

* The large map has produced a lot of terrain uniformity. I have lots of plains. Lots and lots of plains. And basically no rivers. So my population growth is going to take some creative city placement. Milo has complained of his endless ice sheets, and Jaammmesss is reportedly stuck in Dagobah.

* The land surplus also appears to have generated a massive infestation of barbarians. I rarely have to worry about barbarians; in this game, wiping them out is my first order of business. And you don't seem to get Great General points for killing them. Bummer!

So, it looks like the defining features of this game is the sheer worldsize, and our collective lack of experience in worlds larger than the standard Medium.

I'm looking forward to shepherding these pathetic Dutch to greatness. They were quite lost before the influx of Martian culture, believe me.

Pregame: Sowing the Seeds of Luv

My wife occasionally plays Civ at Settler level, just to build wonders and culture-win.

I take Formica's post on my playing style as compliments, and even point to his statement as the primary reason why I'm so quick to start the hostilities: "war would have to start on our terms." I figure if I'm 80% ready for war, the other guy probably isn't more than 50% ready psychologically.

This is, in effect, the Bar Fight Theory of conflict. Sucker punch == win. I tend to do better this way... but I still tend to take only second or third place in Prince-level single player, (and thus give up by Industrialism), and I've yet to have a victory in these multiplayer games with this strategy.

I'm usually thinking about some aspect of the game that I "always do." Lately I've been thinking about overlapping squares, and that seems to help in many ways -- easier to defend, easier to micro city production, cheaper to maintain, faster travel times, etc.

So, going into this next game, I will attempt to be less overtly aggressive.

Or not. Maybe this is all a trick to lull my opponents into a false sense of, "this time is different."

Snivelization: todb's recap

Snivelization ran for three rounds, totalling 12 hours, and had five human players:

Humans:
Formica: Charlie / Holy Romans
Milo MOARai: Peter / Russians
todb : Julie / Romans (renamed as Carealot Kingdom)
Mike : Louis / French
James : Sitting Bull / Native Americans

(Jmbh couldn't make it this time).

AI:

Pacal / Mayans
Giggles / Sumerians
Lincoln / Americans
Sally / Arabians

(Note, here's a handy reference for leaders and traits).

This was the first game we played with Permanent Alliances enabled.

My entire game was pretty much fixed at around turn 10. As it happened, my first wandering warrior came across a very close French border. Naturally, I declare war immediately, walk in, and notice an undefended Paris. "Nice huts," I say. Being on a hill, I can see the closest defender is three turns away. Next turn, I'm standing next to a naked Paris.

I did not wipe out France. Instead, we struck a deal -- I would concentrate on military might (having a nice early unit, everyone's favorite Praetorian), and he would feed me tech, in exchange for me not killing him. I kept a close eye on France to ensure they weren't trying to build a military behind my back, and they didn't. Later on, the deal morphed some into France serving as a buffer state between Rome and America.

Of course, not all was sunshine and roses for the Carealot Kingdom. France had the only convienent source of iron, so the deal morphed into, an iron-and-tech in exchange for peace. Carealot was still ahead in Axemen (Axebears?), so war was still a meaningful threat.

This comfortable early dominance over another human civilization proved massively useful -- I was able to build a navy that utterly dominated the eastern ocean between us and the Native Americans. I also noticed that the top two AIs (Maya and Sumeria) also shared a continent with Native America. Feeling that the N.Americans weren't doing enough to corral them, I felt that Carealot had to intervene on that dangerous continent, in the form of forcing Native America into capitulation.

However, the Axis of Caring's eventual undoing was precisely the same source of its strength; by completely outsourcing my tech research to France, when it came time to face off against the remaining humans (who presumably did not have a similar arrangement), we were quickly and woefully out-teched. I had no real science infrastructure to speak of by the 1400s, and only then did I start building even libraries.

The disparity became apparent immediately after the first Zionist-Crusader invasion; while we were able to leverage naval power quite effectively, and did beat off the land units after only a few turns, the next wave of attacks were stymied by our total lack of air power and submarines After the Manhattan Project was completed by ForMilo, and their massive Uranium richness (four sources to our one), and our complete lack of Rocketry, it was obvious we were doomed.

Thus, a pair of civs which each had their own science infrastructure trounced the other pair. I figure the beaker gap between us two superpowers to have been about 60%, total. They were just researching things so much faster than we were.

So, final thoughts:

Even if you are able to enslave another human civ, don't rely on that fact for a huge component of your combined output for too long. It's a nice, almost unbeatable early boost, but it will evaporate eventually.

Don't be overly belligerent with the AI unless you plan to completely crush/vassal them. We spent far too much divided effort on battling the Americans and Sumerians seperately. I also feel we should have been closer buddies with the Arabians, who were an early tech leader and sworn foes of the ForMilo collective.

Small-area city clustering still seems very effective use of available land, but given the early alliance, it's hard to calculate the true effects.

Too many revolutions without the Spiritual Trait will murder output.

Too many wonders will not only make your cities attractive targets, but can easily lead you down a defenseless path (my spot diagnosis of Native America's problems)

The undefended capital problem goes without saying. :) I had my own capital undefended for maybe 5 turns, but I was nervous about it the entire time, and was building a warrior as my first project to fix that.

Monday Night Civ

Tod, myself and the rest of these folks have now been regularly sitting down to play Civ 4 BTS for about 4 hours every Monday night. It's a whole new Civ experience for me, one that really wasn't possible until Civ 4 itself came along. Civ 4's engine and interface is, at last designed for multiplayer from the ground up. I really enjoy Monday Night Civ, and I'm glad it's been added to my schedule.

I've been playing Civ for just as long as Tod has, and I think Civ 4 BTS is the best iteration of the game so far.

Snivelization was our second game, and the first in which I had a chance to succeed. I was dealt the Holy Romans, whom I had never played; in single player I tend to pick the Romans (call me twinky, it's okay) or the English. Holy Rome gets Imperialistic and Protective, an upgraded Pikeman, and upgraded courthouses.

Imperialistic of course benefits the warmonger with its double-speed generals, but half-price Settlers can be appreciated by anybody. Protective was new to me; I had not played with it before. Landsknechts turned out to be a bust because I didn't end up fighting a middle age war, and I think they're a bit useless in terms of the time period. 65% courthouses are, of course, glorious.

Three continents, nine civs, five humans. The game sprawled out over a convoluted map and distributed the players somewhat awkwardly. I started in the south, next to Milo, who had the Russians. Tod got Julius Caesar, which naturally made me terrified given he's the most aggressive Civ player I know. Giving him Praetorians seemed like game over already, but then, I like to exaggerate. The phear of the Carealot kingdom - the Axis of Caring, really - was enough to scare Milo and I into rather peaceful relations, with the Arabs to his east to beat up on from time to time.

Holy Rome starts with Mysticism, so naturally I gunned for a religion. Founding one, I chose Christianity for the Holy Roman aspect. Later I grabbed another and founded Taoism; I found Milo and, after a few hundred years of badgering, got him to allow me to spread the Good News to the Russian people. He ended up founding Judaism, so with the Old and New Testaments involved, our people seemed of an accord that the real threat was the Care Bear Stare that lived in the North.

Milo and I are both defensive players by nature. Indeed, the whole reason I started playing the Romans in single player was to learn how to be aggressive in the early game. As it happened, neither of us made threatening moves and, eventually, just built like crazy, waiting for the Hugs that we knew were coming.

As Civ games go this was one of my better build outs. I still have not adopted the strategy Tod suggested of just overlapping more. When it comes to city placement, I'm very set in my ways, and the idea of overlapping four squares is very foreign. In part this is because I don't like to micro my populations a lot. I'll move city populations around for growth or production, but only when I want to stop their growth or really crank out a wonder or something. I micro my workers religiously, as well as my build queues; I never let the computer build anything for me or improve my terrain, ever. This is a much easier level of micro in Civ 4 because there's just less cities. At first I missed the sprawling cityscapes of Civ 3, but having played quite a bit of Civ 4 now I really prefer this scale.

The one strategy I did manage to pull off extremely well is the Great People Farm (or Pump). This is a city specifically designed to crank out GPs all game. While wonders are important for GPs, Specialists are easier to get and in the end are the cornerstone of GP production. This means high population, high food, damn the production and commerce, BREED. On top of this, a new national wonder in BTS called the National Park gives you a free specialist for every Forest Preserve you have in the city's radius.

My capital was built with two floodplains, two clams, some grass, and twelve forests on varied terrain. I chopped two of the forests for an early wonder, but had ten remaining when Biology came along. The resulting GP city was the best I've ever built:


If I'd been playing as a Philosophical leader the results would have been absurd; even so I was able to build both my holy buildings, have four golden ages, build an academy, and still have three prophets and an engineer snoozed in my capital. Note that this is in 1955, with Emancipation - I'm not using Caste System.

In any event that was by far the most specialized strategy I implemented. The rest of my cities were a balance of commerce and production. I spread out and de-jungled the northern part of the continent and slowly, achingly slowly civilized that part of the world.

Because Milo and I tend to be rather peaceful and defensive players, our continent was one of commerce and large garrisons. I built out a number of primarily-commerce cities, gunning for Economics and building more coastal cities later in the game to take advantage of Customs Houses. Protective meant I had reasonable stacks of City Defense 3 units throughout the game, culminating in a respectable number of infantry.

The Carealot Kingdom quickly dominated its neighbors and appeared to direct them with threats of force for much of the game. As the wars dragged on and the pronouncements of Hugs were heard, our people became more and more concerned about the Axis of Caring. We built a city in a strategic island near them, as a forward base from which to defend our lands.

Things were tensely quiet as the Axis attempted to get giggy with Gilamesh. Unfortunately for the Kingdom, the Sumerian Navy was significantly more potent than they anticipated. The war ended quickly as a result.

About this time I had discovered Combustion. The Axis solidified its position as Mike and Tod formed a Permanent Alliance, and Jamie Retired with his people as Vassals to Carealot. Faced with this bloc of Caring, Milo and I formed our own alliance. I had founded Christianity, and he was the center of Judaism. Thus was the Zionist-Crusader Alliance born.

Tod being the most aggressive Civ player I know and Mike being the guy who wiped me out last game, it was clear the war would have to start on our terms. With the Combustion edge I decided to deploy a stack of Destroyers and land a punitive force in their homeland for the express purpose of harassment and pillage. Originally, there was a plan to take a strategic port city - Marseilles - which acted as a canal between the two oceans.

About those oceans: the terrain in this game was a mess. While there were technically three continents, the ice caps made navigation around the globe impossible. Tod had his own little sea to play around in, but in the end the city of Marseilles was the only passage between his bathtub and the rest of the world.

In any case, seeing no Combustion-based ships in the Axis navy, the war was on. A large stack of infanty and cannons made their way to Mike's France, pillaging their way up the coast. The Destroyers of the Alliance Navy initially won battles, but the Axis quickly gunned for Combustion and proceeded to show us exactly how to fight a war at sea.

I have never been big on navies in Civ. It's a weakness, a flaw in my strategies. I know this. That said, the war became an industrial age naval conflict with comparatively low casualties, keeping war weariness at bay. The Axis Navy was a force to be reckoned with, and the non-starter of taking Marseilles meant they could reinforce and re-arm as needed. The Axis used blockading and zones of naval control to great effect, and mounted a successful counterattack. They took my forward city, Aachen, and renamed it "Power of Love" (can you feel it?). Hugs were dispensed, and the stage was set for the Care Bear Stare to deliver its Love to Orenburg, Milo's primary port city in the combat zone.

The first battle of Orenburg was won by the Alliance rather handily; it became clear that my Protective Infantry were going to continue to hold off whatever was thrown at us. Submarines were deployed under the ice caps to pillage Axis resources thought untouchable.

Once First Orenburg was over, the Zionist-Crusader Alliance dedicated itself to the pursuit of the Bomb. A rather long lull in the fighting descended; Flight was discovered, Bombers were built. An Axis naval flotilla was seen to the north of Orenburg, and to our surprise, the Second Battle of Orenburg was initiated thereafter (we figured they'd go for a less protected island city).

It was at the Second Battle of Orenburg that the Axis realized it was out-teched. Waves of bombers pounded the invasion force. Artillery delivered ballistic Love from behind fortifications. Industrialism was at hand and Tanks began to pour forth.

The Second Battle of Orenburg resulted in the Axis Expeditionary Force retreating to its transports without ever executing a single offensive maneuver.

The flotilla moved on, eventually attacking the aforementioned island city and destroying it from the sea. But the writing was on the wall; even as the flotilla closed on my own port cities to the north, ICBMs were being built and readied to deliver their Message. When the Axis invasion of Holy Rome was blunted by tanks and highly trained Infantry, the Axis conceded and retired.

One turn before my first ICBM was completed.

Second game, first post

I have an endless fascination with Civ, or more formally, Sid Meier's Civilization. I've been playing this damn game for approximately 15 years and change, starting with Civilizations, culminating with Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword. The only game I've played longer is the *Hack tree of rougelike derivatives.

I've recently started playing in a group comprised of three old BBS/school friends, my younger brother, and a former co-worker in a regular multiplayer game. Before this, my multiplayer experience has been limited to one game of FreeCiv, and a (still running) pair of PBEM Civ4 games (about two years and still going).

Anyway, I figure it's high time we put together a blog to talk about multiplayer and why exactly we all suck at this game, despite the countless hours invested.

This blog will serve as a repository of multiplayer (and occasional single player) wisdom, as well as a place to chronicle our victories (and more often) crushingly stupid defeats.

Oh, and this blog starts at the end of our second live game. I've lost both so far. The first was a blowout by one player. The second was more evenly matched, but I got ate by tech.