Your SID level experiences

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Vince278
Am I given to understand that NOBODY has won a game yet at Sid level?

Somebody (Master Zen?) told me that there was a single Sid win during the beta.

I'm pretty sure that there are a number of us that could do it (Is there a Dr. Aeson in the house? ), but nobody has subjected themselves to the slog of it yet, as there are too many other fun things with which to play around.

Might be a fun DG project.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Vince278
Am I given to understand that NOBODY has won a game yet at Sid level?

check out the "beyond sid" thread and civfanatics. bamspeedy, one of the crazy guys actually won a level with the AI having 10 times cheapter buildings and units (at sid: only 2.5 times cheaper) than the human player. also, every AI had 4 settlers at the beginning and free unit support for several dozen units!

of course that game was using one main legal exploit: suicide curraghs/galleys. and it was a isolated start.
read the thread, 163 MGLs were produced!!!!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...threadid=66169


edit: and i remember reading a beta testers report that sid had been beaten. however, i don't know if that's just of archipelagio or also pangea/continents

[DrSpike]

Resources will be found..........I'm waiting for the FP rigmarole to sort itself out then I'll try it properly. On cooked settings I doubt its even that hard, but without them it's quite scary.

[Enriquillo]

Hehe I don't think it's worth going republic until you have conquered enough cities to be a force in the game. And if you haven't done that already you may as well give up I'm afraid.

Conquering cities!? Are you mad??!!

The window of oppurtunity for your ancient age units is very, very small. Before you know it you're fighting muskets and even riflemen.
I guess with a good UU, like Immortals, Mounted or Gaelic warriors, you might stand a better chance, but still....

I agree that Republic wasn't a great choice, but not for the reason you gave, it wasn't smart because I had no luxuries and no means of trading for them either. Also, I didn't have monarchy researched yet.
Just 2 luxuries would have allowed me to move the luxury slider from 30% to 20% or even 10%, thus giving me some money to work with.

There was no way to be a force on this map, it was just not possible. I had a good rex and managed to build 16 good cities before running out of space.

Now cooking settings might change all this, but that would be cheating... oh wait, that's exactly what the AI does on SID level.
Imagine being expansionist and finding 4 free techs, that would equal 200 turns of researching on SID

[DrSpike]

Well 16 cities is fine..........republic should be prioritised in that case over masses of ancient age units, and resources used to prepare the transition. No luxuries is a mean blow if you have enough territory for 16 cities........that must have annoyed you a touch.

Maybe in Republic you could have used the lower research costs for last place to catch up enough to kick some ass late game. Maybe not, but with that much room (16 cities on Sid is not common.........the most I got without extreme packing was 6 or so) that'd be my first choice if no one was around for you to kick in the admittedly small window early on.

I wish I'd got 16 cities without conquering in my Sid games.

[Enriquillo]

Only 6 cities? Weird, as I was playing standard settings, continents, and could easily have build even 20 cities had I grabbed the land to the north of me, which was all ice btw.

[DrSpike]

Well it depends on the start..........did you say standard settings? If so 16 cities on Sid is not that common. But you have resources either way. If they start closer you have a chance at exploiting the smallish window with a bunch of upgrades. If you have a load of land anyway, like you did, I would use high research early on and keep things moving, try to go republic when feasible, and not use resources for upgrades and a big army, because as you say, the window is small and you will probably miss it. No luxuries is nasty, but not insurmountable.

Of course there is a chance you can never catch up once you fall behind, but that looks to be a decent start........foment some wars mid game, use human judgement to offset the mass of units they have lategame and through selective wars hopefully catch up enough in tech to win. Hopefully.

[Enriquillo]

Yep, standard settings, barbs on roaming and everything else default. I had culture victory and everything on, which is why I decided not to continue that game.
A luxury or two would have really helped in this case, but it's pretty common to either get good land and no luxuries or crappy land and 2 luxuries. Either way is not great if you ask me.

Trying to start a feasible game now, with England or some other seafaring nation.
No barbarians, minus two AI's. No luck so far, I've bumped into Germans in one game, they declared war early on after I beat them to a good city site and they levelled that town. Can you say restart

[DrSpike]

That's not just Sid though........my only Monarch level game with C3C was a humbling defeat before 3000BC when Bismarck turned up with a spear and an archer and beelined for my capital. I was unamused.

[Inverse Icarus]

those incan stacks give me joy.

[Enriquillo]

Oh joy Building 3 cities before running out of space is so much fun...

[mrmitchell]

[Enriquillo]

OK, this SID thing gives the weirdest maps.
The one I'm playing now is probably the best chance I'll ever get of beating SID. I started about a dozen others before this one , I didn't get past 3 or 4 cities once.
Now I'm playing as the English on a large archi map, with 5 opponents.
I have 17 cities and room for about 5 more.
One turn away from the Great Library and mapmaking, I even gave the Japanese the finger when they demanded writing from me.
The poor sobs didn't even know how to sail across the ocean yet, so I figured I could afford a war with 'em

Now if I just have the patience to play this out... I'm actually starting to believe I might stand a chance this time. Poor naive me

Just watch me not get any saltpeter and iron! To be continued...

[Enriquillo]

Here's the save for 4000BC, try it out, it's a good one.

I won't give you any hints, you can probably tell enough from the screenshot.

Rules:
level: SID
map: large archi (smallest islands available)
barbs: non existent
AI's: five, nonseafaring, but one random.

Great island to start with, enough luxuries and lots of river and cows, can't ask for anything more.

[vmxa1]

Five civs on a large map? I think you need to have at least 8 to make it reasonable. It makes things distorted too much with so few civs in that much land/water.

[DrSpike]

Don't blame him.........I planted the cooking idea earlier.

[Enriquillo]

I think more civs can even make it easier, because the bully, the japanese in my case, just pick on the smaller civs and get free armies while doing it.

So I don't think having less civs makes it easier. All the land will be covered anyway, just with fewer and larger AI's.
But, I'll try one later with standard amount of civs, I just picked less so I wouldn't have one on my island.
That would mean mission impossible

Just try the save, it's a good game I promise you. The Japanese are pretty mean in this one.
And ofcourse it's cheating, I restarted until I got a reasonable start with at least 2 luxuries to work with.
I never do this on emperor, but on SID I figure I need to cheat a little...
Besides, I played one earlier on standard setts, with standard number of AI's and barbs. I was doing just as well, but had no luxuries to work with which really killed my game.
I agree getting to 16+ cities on SID is pretty rare, but it does happen. You just need to restart a few times, hehe.

EDIT: I think the main 'trick' to beat SID is to get the Great Library through a palace prebuild. You can just make loads of money after that, build up your temples/libraries and work from there.
I got about 6 techs the turn after I got the GL build.
I figure the playing field is pretty much level now that I've got the GL and 3 luxuries.

[Theseus]

I had the same issues with Bamspeedy's pre-C3C game, but good for you for even TRYING Enriquillo!!

I have a different idea:

Without 'cooking", what would be the best civ / settings / start / etc., to play for a reasonable shot at winning? Normal stuff only, please.

[Enriquillo]

IMHO, it'd be large archi, England, but Holland would do as well.
I just feel the man-o-war is a more usefull UU, although I haven't yet gotten to the point where I could use them on SID.

Ofcourse you need to restart a few times to get a reasonable starting location.

[ThePlagueRat]

Originally posted by Alex
Sid? He doesn't even play Civ anymore.

Not even freeciv?
I suspect it was him that wiped my bottoms here the other day.

[Theseus]

Enriquillo, did you see AI C3C Armies?

[Footballgod128]

what does cooking mean...?

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Theseus
Enriquillo, did you see AI C3C Armies?

I think he meant numbers of troops as opposed to a army as a unit.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Footballgod128
what does cooking mean...?

It means that you set things up with artifical parameters to make it better for the player.

This could mean using lots of water and picking a seafaring civ or maybe an unusal number of civs for the land (either too few or too many). I am not sure if that is a cooking issue or not.

Reloading to get optimal start locations and neighbors and the like. Of course using an editor is beyond cooking.

It would be interesting to hear from others as to what is a fair test, other than a straight random run. I mean I am not sure if 5 civs is an issue or not, but I think it probably could be one.
I can see in that setup if you were Mayan, you could rex a lot of land. In the Sid game that Dom posted he ran a lot of cities. I choose not to as the FP and GPT bug were not fixed at that time and I was trying to avoid it.

[Enriquillo]

I´ll have to check on that armie thing, I did resign once and noticed there were a lot of leaders generated by Japan, but I doubt they have armies though. Sorry for the confusion.

This is just a practice game to get a feel for SID, a little cooking is necessary I´m afraid. You don´t stand a chance without it, at least I don´t

[Aeson]

I think Agricultural and Seafaring (Dutch) are the best on standard settings Sid. Seafaring for best chance you can play middle man between continents, and the best starting tech. Agricultural because it makes every other tile with fresh water access a bonus food source, and you can build Granaries from the start.

If you pull off the Great Library, you could even be the first one to safely cross oceans with your Carracks. Probably gives you time for one 'free' war where you can safely get to the AI and they can't get to you. (Seafaring can do this on it's own too) The Great Library also makes Agricultural even better, as you'll get a Government tech to switch to right after it's built most likely.

Iroquois are a very good choice with their new Agricultural and Commercial traits. They have Alphabet, and can build Granaries from the start. MW's powerful, moreso now as Iron is less common.

Those two have the most synergy between their traits and UU IMO. A lot of others have good traits and good UU's that don't quite click together as nicely.

Expansionist is very good on larger landmasses still. You can scout out the AI's territory, which keeps you from attacking blind, and lets you get contacts on the other side. With the changes to map trading, it's very close to the other two top traits even on standard settings.

Main problem with Expansionist is that the Inca are the ones which combine it with Agriculture, and their UU loses some of these advantages. Ability to stay in AI territory for extended periods of time being the biggest hit. At least you have a regular Scout at the start though.

Scientific is much more important on Sid than it is on Deity IMO. You can research Iron Working right off. Byzantines and Persia are both good Scientific civs, and Russia is the best civ for spotting Iron. Where the Iron shows up will change the course of the game quite a bit. The change in chances for SGL's is insignificant on Sid though, you can get Literature first (if you start with Alphabet) and that will probably be your last one.

Commercial is pretty good because it starts with Alphabet. You're not going to get a whole lot of cities most of the time, so the corruption aspect of the trait is less useful. If you're not Seafaring, Commercial becomes more important.

Industrious is nice, but it's not a big deal. Agricultural civs will complete terrain improvements as fast or faster because they end up with more Workers. The Maya are the exception as they get both traits. Combined with Commercial or Seafaring, Industrious gets better. Being able to go for Mathmatics gives you an earlier shot at Zeus is you're lucky, early Catapults, and a very long shot at a 'first to' tech for trading. The 'first to' shot would require bad AI start positions, none of them with Alphabet or Masonry probably.

Militaristic isn't quite as important on Sid IMO. Often on lower difficulty levels the cost of a Barracks will allow for faster rushes, but you don't really want faster rushes on Sid. Also, with the increased upgrade costs and narrower windows of opportunity, more of your Warriors built early aren't going to get upgraded, and so don't need to be Vets. This is offset by the slightly better chance of getting a Leader (Army), which makes a bigger difference in C3C.

Religious is my least favorite trait for Sid (one of my favorites on Deity). Lower government transition time is nice, so are cheaper Temples and Cathedrals, but they are advantages you'll be out of the Ancient Era to first take advantage of. Most of the other traits build up enough advantage during the Ancient Era that will cover anything you can get from Religious later on.

Combined with an Alphabet starting tech, Religious gets better though, because you'll get to the Middle Ages a lot faster with the Great Library. Indians are an interesting choice because your Elephants are powerful, with the Great Library you'll likely have them with a window of opportunity to use them, and you won't get screwed by Iron or Horses. (note to self: try the Indians on Sid)

[Filippo]

well if you play archipelago sooner or later you will need to conquer someone's other island. And there's none as good at that as the Vikings :P

[Filippo]

The Portugues have a nice UU and traits sinegery too I think, and they are good in an archipelago map, because you will get free techs from the villages and you will have more chances to meet other civs earlier and exchange these techs. Also in the middle age their Carrack will wipe out other ships

[Aeson]

There definitely is a major change in the feel of the game depending on how crowded a map is. The AI's do worse the larger they get, relative to what more AI's could do with the same territory. Each AI will be stronger, but taken as a whole, the AI's will be weaker.

The biggest advantage the AI gets in the expansion phase is the free units at the start. They don't make very good use of faster production times for Settlers, and don't set up Worker/Settler factories. So the longer the expansion phase, the more ground the player can make up.

On lower difficulty levels there are advantages to more crowded maps too, mainly that there are more AI to take advantage of militarily and diplomatically. You can realistically fight AI after AI, or trade around, and gain more because there are more of them to fight. On Sid, you need a substantial buildup phase before being in a position to take even little bites out of an AI. You also get screwed badly in every deal you make, and so the trading game doesn't really pay off much (without the gpt bug). From an alliance standpoint, more civs is harder on Sid too. When you fight one of 6 AI, you need to buy off a neighbor or two to make sure all 6 aren't going to come after you. With 16, you're going to need to buy off more of them.

There are more diplomatic opportunities with more AI, but the AI will get the advantage out of them much more often than at lower difficulty levels.

[Aeson]

I did confuse the Portugeuse and Dutch UU's... oops. The main advantage of the Dutch is food and contacts, but losing out on Carracks does dent them a little.