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Post by Moo on Jan 19, 2009 14:59:33 GMT
Stephanie has a nice hat, but Ars (yoink!) needs a couple of donuts, not a fruit basket. Maybe he'd appreciate the sugar rush more than most.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 19, 2009 15:04:21 GMT
He's already been renamed Arse Monday. Not that I've seen him yet. They're more of an endgame thing, when you have huge fourking wars going on, rather than spats between two races over some town.
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Post by Moo on Jan 19, 2009 15:05:40 GMT
So basically, when you see Stephanie and her boney Arse, you know you're in trouble.
A bit like watching Lazytown then.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 19, 2009 15:24:23 GMT
Unlucky s1ut. I hope you've learnt much from this, and will come back strongly next time... Sounds like it was an interesting experience. What level are you playing on? Noble, which I think it the fourth one up, out of eight.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 19, 2009 19:22:43 GMT
So this is the map now that I own the island. I have absolutely zero idea as to where everyone else is.
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Post by Sonic on Jan 20, 2009 2:41:39 GMT
Stu, have you ever wanted to hold you own inquisition? Well this game gives you chance, and those that set up base in your towns with Religion can go via a fiery, bloody path.
That link above has something on it in post 18.
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Post by Narcizo on Jan 20, 2009 7:45:05 GMT
The best bit about Civ is always when you get off your own island and start seeing what the rest of the world looks like and who's fighting whom etc. Of course once you get to the hard levels that joy is tempered by the sinking realisation that everyone else has armour and aircraft carriers while you're tootling around in your sail boats.
Dunno how things work in Civ 4 but by Civ 3 standards your cities are too dispersed, even if a couple of them have been nabbed off of the Elohim.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 20, 2009 15:26:34 GMT
The best bit about Civ is always when you get off your own island and start seeing what the rest of the world looks like and who's fighting whom etc. Of course once you get to the hard levels that joy is tempered by the sinking realisation that everyone else has armour and aircraft carriers while you're tootling around in your sail boats. Dunno how things work in Civ 4 but by Civ 3 standards your cities are too dispersed, even if a couple of them have been nabbed off of the Elohim. I haven't played a Civ since II, so I've no idea if the cities are too dispersed or not and no real inclination to find out as things are always more interesting when you've no idea how to min/max your situation for maximum return. The two eastern cities were Elohim towns, the north west is my capital and starting area, the middle one was nabbed because it has four vineyards available and the south west is for access to gold and the sea. The middle one couldn't expand in the early game because it was right against the Elohim borders, but it's probably my best town now. There appears to be a space in the north where I could put another settlement, but there's no real resources there, except for one rice field.
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Post by coffers on Jan 20, 2009 15:33:00 GMT
Surely you can't get enough rice?
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 20, 2009 16:59:47 GMT
The problem is that rice is all they'll have. So they'll sit around complaining and generally dragging down the average happiness of my civilisation. To keep them amused and distracted from their horrible lives I'll have to build markets and festivals and monuments and pubs and then I'll end up with a town filled with drunken art students who never do any real work.
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Post by Boony on Jan 20, 2009 17:04:28 GMT
That's how they built Oxford, you know...
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 20, 2009 17:16:27 GMT
I was going to make that joke, but then I realised i couldn't think of a town in the south of England the description didn't fit.
I was amused recently by news from the Elbow that at the back of town they knocked down the petrol station between two pubs and... put another pub in the gap.
I'm not sure what people at Luton University study though. Langwidj an' culchur probably.
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Post by Moo on Jan 21, 2009 8:48:05 GMT
Nice map, Stu.
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Post by hornet on Jan 21, 2009 16:48:11 GMT
I need to have another crack at Civ 4. I had a really good time but was astonishingly bad at it the first time around.
Every time I played I'd be cruising, then I'd get to the middlegame, run out of room to expand, a barney would kick off then everything would go to crap.
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Post by coffers on Jan 21, 2009 17:24:46 GMT
Every time I played I'd be cruising, then I'd get to the middlegame, run out of room to expand, a barney would kick off then everything would go to crap. I'm having similar problems with Rise of Nations.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 21, 2009 18:06:15 GMT
I need to have another crack at Civ 4. I had a really good time but was astonishingly bad at it the first time around. Every time I played I'd be cruising, then I'd get to the middlegame, run out of room to expand, a barney would kick off then everything would go to crap. That can be an issue with Civ. If you put together 700 turns of building spears for your guys and meticulously aligning cities and resources and then a bigger kid shows up with armoured boots and plants them squarely in your jewels then it can be dispiriting. In the last game I was well past 500 turns when it all ended quite quickly. The war with the Clan had been ticking over uninterrupted since about turn 5 and so I’d settled into a cycle of building and fighting and was happily making some technological advancement, finally, when the Hippus came in and the game was over within 50 turns. It’s is one of the worst one-more-turn games though. It’s not unusual for me to fire it up for a quick go and end up still there a couple of hours later, (a problem made worse by having the game on the laptop, so I can play it on the couch). Once you get four or five cities up and running there’s always something about to happen – either a unit about to come online or a building about to finish or a tech research about to complete that will open up new options and then you want to see what they do and so on. It’s terrible and great all at the once.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 21, 2009 18:29:37 GMT
Having cleared the island of any threats apart from a large Elephant in the south east that I couldn't bother chasing, (insert your own Boony jokes here), I had my four workers, (three captured from the Elohim, thank you beardy dudes), running about as a group building roads everywhere, putting down cottages which over time turn into hamlets, then villages and then towns with each level bringing cash and research and throwing up the odd castle at defensible choke points.
The peace had allowed me to advance in research but I really needed now to get out and meet people. I'd put together a two-ship fleet of man-powered longboats which had tooled around the island in the coastal waters to get a clear view of the geography, (shown in the map above), but now my first Privateer rolled down the ramps in the southwest and I could finally venture out to sea.
The Privateers were sent out empty at first because exploration is more important than troop movement when you don't know where you might want to move and at first I sent them south west which turned out to be exactly the right way.
At first they discovered another island, about half the size of mine which appeared to be covered only with Barbarians. Then heading further west they found the main land mass, shaped like a crescent from south west to north with the points facing back to the east. I introduced myself to everyone I found, but one of the good things about Privateers is that they have hidden nationality which meant I could cross border lines and sink fishing vessels, break lobster pots and generally act like a jerk without anyone being able to pin it on me.
So that's exactly what I did.
Eventually though the projects I was working on back on the newly named Island of Awesome were done and so I turned production to warriors and sent the Privateer home to work with our second new ship to ferry our soldiers over to the Barbar island.
The plan was to put people ashore and the fortify them, send the ships home and bring more to drop onto the defended square to move out and explore the west to see if it was a true island or if there was a thin land bridge to the other Civs, but I just couldn't get a viable force ashore because the Barbarians were so aggressive in their defence.
Eventually I realised there was no way I was going to gain a foothold with simple warriors, so I began to recruit some swordsmen back on the I.o.A. with the intention that I would put a warrior unit ashore in one square, wait a turn and then put a swordsman and warrior ashore in another square, while the first warrior got eaten alive in a touching moment of sacrifice.
This plan actually worked, (which I'm sure made the sacrificial warrior feel much better), but after fortifying the other two the Swordsman took one step west to find out what was about, fell into a mana-pit, (left around by that naughty angel from page one), and was transported from the Barbar island which is near the south pole, way north almost all the way to the north pole, to a piece of land I can't even see.
The turn after that, the second warrior unit, now shorn of his swordy-cousin protector was eaten by wolves.
Which was nice.
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Post by coffers on Jan 22, 2009 0:32:18 GMT
Now that's magic.
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Post by Sonic on Jan 22, 2009 4:49:25 GMT
So, where does that leave you? Apart from on both sides of the map that is.
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Post by Moo on Jan 22, 2009 9:03:49 GMT
Island of Awesome. Has anyone got the link to the Trade Descriptions Act, please?
KUTGW, s1ut! :thumb:
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 22, 2009 12:58:26 GMT
So, where does that leave you? Apart from on both sides of the map that is. For the most part, at that point, it left me exactly where I was. On my island I was making good progress technologically, but I'm thinly defended, relying on distance and the sea to protect me. Offensively I've got my ships back in dock and I'm going to try to get back to Barbar island again. In the north my swordsman found another Barbarian city and captured it, (and the Orc workers there, who are enslaved), but it's a sliver of an island just wide enough for one city. This is a doubled-edged sword as it's adding a fraction to the research and financial totals each turn, but also I have to defend the bloody thing. I might send a ship up there with two basic warrior units on it and bring the swordsman back.
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Post by hornet on Jan 22, 2009 13:02:26 GMT
Go go widely-spaced thinly-defended empire!
What, I ask you, can possibly go wrong?
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Post by Moo on Jan 22, 2009 13:13:15 GMT
So thin even the French fancy their chances? I'd piss myself if you get a message saying
"The French have decided to attack.
DOES NOT COMPUTE..... DOES NOT COMPUTE....."
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 22, 2009 14:44:40 GMT
So, attacking the Barbarian island take six annnnnd..... Action! We're back, with three ships this time, capable of putting four units ashore at once which is what we do, eschewing the old diversion style. The second the four units are down the ships are off back to the Island of Awesome to pick up more guys, although the trip there and back will take eight turns.
So for eight turns our two sword units, single warrior and the strong offensive civ-specific Nyxkin cavalry unity take a battering from repeated Barbarian attack, but with the defensive bonus from the hilly territory I’m on, plus the steadily increasing fortification bonuses they guys weather the storm and beat off the attacks until the reinforcements arrive.
Once the second lot of four units arrive there’s no way I’m going to be forced off and the Barbarian attacks whither. I was hoping that they would send forces out of either of the two cities they have on the island so that I could use my ships to swing a force in around behind the city with the weakened defence, but they weren’t buying that.
So I moved my eight-strong army into the middle of the island and cut the north-south road between the two cities, destroying three stretches of road so that whichever way I go the other city won’t be able to react quickly. Then my guys move south to the smaller city and simply smear the defence back into the sea. They had two axemen in the city, but that was little problem for the sizeable force I’ve now put ashore.
Better yet for me, the northern city had sent some units south and they had just crossed the slow section with no road when I finished the capture in the south, which means that I could run back up the road north while they couldn’t escape and seven strong units against two unfortified Barbarians in the open is only going one way.
With two defending units lost in a pointless foray into the open, the northern city fell shortly thereafter.
Finally, Barbar Island is mine.
At this point I finally finished researching the various combinations of laws, justice and religion to allow me to join the “Overcouncil” which is the U.N. of the game, although at this point it consists of only two nations – the Kuriotates who are apparently the best Civ in the game currently and now us too.
First order of business now that the “N” in “UN” is plural is to vote for a new leader. He votes for him which is an outrage of course, but I can’t really complain as I vote for me.
After a recount the scores are confirmed as 1-1, so it’s down to a coinflip which I win. This is very bad news for the Kuriotates because the voting on resolutions is counted on a majority basis with the leader casting the deciding vote in a tie. So the next 15 resolutions involve the Kuriotates having to give up using all of their most profitable trade routes in a series of votes that all end up in 1-1 ties, except that my “1” is worth a fraction more than their’s.
The bad news is that I can’t vote for him to go to war with someone, as it sends all of the council civs to war, so I’ll just have to settle for making him set fire to his own money instead.
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Post by coffers on Jan 22, 2009 15:38:27 GMT
Fantastic.
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