Sullla AGA16: SPGT32
v.74
Small/Normal/Tropical/Emperor 
Greece: Alexander (Agressive/Philosophical)
Out of the three SPGT games posted by Sirian for v.74, I decided to go for the Emperor one (#32) knowing full well I would only have time for one of the three. While the other two sounded like interesting games as well, I couldn't resist the opportunity to test myself against the Emperor AI in what several other testers had already posted was a "very difficult game." I'm afraid that SPGT33 was lost amongst a number of people thinking the same thing; maybe Sirian can sponsor an Epic speed game for v.76 (?)
As far as this game - founded on the starting square. There's horses, marble, and two clams at the starting position, which is certainly better than I'm likely to get by moving. Capital build order starts out Work Boat -> Worker -> Warrior -> Settler, an order that I've found often works well with sea-based resources at the capital. All depends on the exact situation, of course. Research went into Mysticism -> Polytheism (then Spain founds Hinduism in 3640BC, prompting a swap to) -> Meditation -> Animal Husbandry. I did get Buddhism in 3280BC, which allowed me to swap to the religion and never have to deal with the religion bug in this game. Game therefore got off to a good start.
Unfortunately, as anyone who played this game soon learned, the land around the starting position was all jungle. I mean, ALL JUNGLE. 
Makes for an interesting game, no doubt, but not one I was eager to play around with when surrounded by aggressive AI civs. Met Napoleon, Isabella, and Caesar all quite early - a rather aggressive bunch, only Caesar being a somewhat peaceful guy. What's worse, Napoleon blocked the only possible direction for expansion (east) so the odds of playing the game peacefully were just about nil. By 1500BC, I had already realized I could not win the game just through peaceful development. There's not enough land to do so, and everything close to me was solid jungle anyway. Therefore, at some point in time I'm going to need more land, and Napoleon is the best person to get it from.
Researching Bronze Working revealed that there was no copper near me. Rather than go on to research Iron Working and hope that I had iron, I decided to research Horseback Riding instead and go after Nappy with Horse Archers. That's not to say I did nothing but focus on war; I had Athens build the Oracle in 1280BC and took Metal Casting with it. I see that Aeson managed to get Civil Service from the Oracle, but I feared another AI civ building it themselves if I waited any longer to build it (the AI builds those wonders fast on Emperor!) That of course got me a couple GrProphets that I used to build my Buddhist shrine (and I think I merged another GrProphet into Athens for extra production and money). Caught another nice break around 1200BC when Nappy declared war on Izzy - just the sort of thing I needed! Here was the situation around 1000BC:
Researching Horseback Riding, Athens is building its forge. Sparta was the ONLY genuinely good site around the capital, with cows and rice. Still a lot of jungle stunting its growth though... Thermo was the only decent spot I could find in the south, with spices and (after border expansion) cows. Also note the crippling happiness penalty you get from playing on Emperor; Sparta is only size 4, and it's already unhappy! I waited forever for my religion to spread there, then finally gave up and just built the obelisk you see there. Bah.
This was one of the big changes between pre-expansion Civ4 and the later expansions: the default health and happiness scaled by difficulty level. Originally, the player had an extremely low health and happiness cap on the top difficulties which made Emperor and Deity very, very tough to play. The gameplay became much easier when the expansions swapped over to the same flat health/happy cap on all difficulties and I've always felt that this was a mistake. Making due with a mere 3 happiness in your cities took true skill to pull off.
One of the other major motivations for war was to gain access to more happiness resources, without which I would be crippled. More on that a bit later though.
Preparations for war were proceeding apace, when Caesar declared war completely out of nowhere. No demands, no bad relations between us, just out of the blue. And he attacked me with... a warrior and an archer?! What?
Now since I had a bunch of Horse Archers on hand with which to attack Nappy, I easily slaughtered this invasion. But I was left scratching my head over why he had declared war in the first place, Caesar being on the opposite side of the continent from me. This is the first war declaration I've seen in Civ4 that literally made NO sense whatsoever. It felt like a "dice roll" war declaration, and that's not good. I've got a 500BC savegame that I'll post (along with some other ones) so that maybe Soren can figure out what's going on. Very bizarre incident.
Only a couple of turns later, I was ready to declare war on Napoleon. Hostilities were opened in 475BC, and I easily took the city of Rheims on the first turn of the war.
Note that Buddhism has spread to the French city of Rheims, but has still not spread to Sparta yet, heh. As far as the French war went, Napoleon was fighting mostly with Horse Archers, the same as me. This unfortunately turned much of the combat into dice rolls with a 50% chance to go either way. My lack of metals for spears (phalanxes!) definitely hurt here. At one point I even lost Rheims when I had some bad dice luck, although I did easily recapture it on the next turn.
Now the whole point of the war was to capture two cities from France - Rheims and Orleans. I captured Rheims easily, but since I was taking some signicant losses to my Horse Archers, I wasn't able to get down to Orleans as soon as I would have liked. But by 125BC I finally had 5 Horse Archers in position to strike against the 2-3 archers I knew would be in the city (big advantage for me). But what do I find in the city when I arrive next to it? Nappy's got a SPEAR in there! Argh!
The unit isn't fortified, it was only produced THIS turn. Big kudos to the AI for putting a spear in the city (if this wasn't just due to chance), but it means I have no chance to capture the city. 
Furthermore, one thing I became convinced of while playing this game is that Orleans was the key to success on this map. The location that Nappy picked for the city had incense, TWO spices, bananas, and (most importantly) a gems resource. That gems resource meant +2 happy faces in all cities (with forge), so combined with the incense the city of Orleans meant 3 happy faces. That's a LOT! I already had spices at Thermo, but additional ones would allow me to trade them for further resources. So the spot was absolutely critical; I believe that capturing Orleans would be the key to success on this map (among many other things, of course). I failed to take it here - but I expected to be back at some point.
Peace signed with Napoleon in 125BC, giving me a much-needed break to start some internal development. Rheims was still a major prize, containing a key sugar resource that would add more happiness (though without Calendar I couldn't connect it yet). Here's how things stood in 1AD:
Speak of the devil, I seem to be researching Calendar now. 
With Sparta so unhappy yet still possessing a ton of food (from its rice tile), I had it produce a steady stream of workers and settlers for just ages on end. Now it was time to get some more cities in the center of my territory and start cutting down some of that jungle. But first - Nappy demanded Alphabet in 175AD. I refused, and he declared war again! Probably not the smartest move from him, because I immediately moved my force of horse archers back into his territory, found that there was no spear in Orleans, and captured the city! 
(Red flag for the AI here: if the player is using horses, it should DEFINITELY station a spear in its border cities, probably more than one if possible. It should be possible to implement that, right?)
There's the key city flying the Greek flag; I've circled the critical gems resource in yellow to identify it better. Napoleon continued to send mostly Horse Archers after me, which I was able to take care of without much of a problem with my own Horse Archers. Now what Nappy SHOULD HAVE DONE was send some spears at me; he did have copper and easily could have done so. I would have been unable to cope with that, lacking metals myself, but he never figured it out. Thus when I got peace in 425AD, I was the clear victor, having taken Orleans at virtually no cost whatsoever. The AI generally does a good job of building combined arms, but it over-builds horse units when it has that resource. And of course it's easy to take out any unit if the AI builds it exclusively. I'm pretty sure that Soren is already aware of this problem with the AI loving horses too much, but I wanted to re-emphasize it here. Also notice that the unit flags have disappeared from some of the units in the above picture; the units one tile south of Orleans are Napoleon's but it's impossible to tell any way other than by mouse-over. Lost a worker due to this, gak! Hopefully will be fixed in v.76.
I had gotten up to 500AD at this point and carved out enough territory for a decent core of cities. The (gigantic) task ahead of me was now to turn this festering mess of jungle into a research and production machine capable of competing with Emperor-boosted AIs. Uh, yeah. Well, that's the plan. 
Here's what things looked like in 500AD:
Nappy's lost his entire western core to me; Orleans's borders extend right up to Paris itself. I really didn't have a choice in the matter; without Rheims and Orleans I would not have the territory or the resources to win the game. This has come at a price, of course. First of all, because I had to spend so much time building those Horse Archers, Athens was beaten to the Great Library by 5 turns in 560AD, which was a significant setback. Secondly, by roughing up Napoleon I had made a mortal enemy, and there was no way I would ever be on friendly relations with him. Since Izzy was locked into hatred as well due to her xenophobia and different religion, that meant Caesar was the only AI on my island with whom I might be able to have decent relations. I soon met Elizabeth (and found out how far behind I was, yikes!) and when our borders expanded to touch one another, we were able to trade some resources, which helped a LOT. I would have been in extraordinarily bad shape on the health/happiness front without the resources at Rheims/Orleans.
I took the above screenshot with the minimized interface and played around with that a bit. It seems like it could be pretty slick, but unfortunately it causes the minimap to disappear. That's a problem, because I can't imagine myself trying to play this game without the minimap. Is there any way we could get the minimap to stay on the screen with the reduced interface? I think I would like that kind of a system quite a bit. Probably too late to do too much with this now, of course...
Met Lizzie in 660AD, signed Open Borders and got her to Pleased. In 740, Orleans' borders expanded and that gave me an extra silk to trade to Caesar for spices, which helped out our relations quite a bit. I noted that this finally put me over the happiness hump; I now had 5 happiness resources coming in, and I think a total of +7 happy faces with market and forge. Takes a lot more effort to reach this point on Emperor than on Noble!
I further built the Colossus in Athens in 830, which was another nice boost. Now one thing I noticed in this game was that the trees on a forest tile did NOT disappear when they were cut down and an improvement placed on it. Take a look at the following picture of Athens:
Bad enough is the cottage to the east of the city center, which has trees growing through the buildings. But even worse is the FARM to the west of the city - you can't tell that there's a farm at all there! Reloading from a save fixed the problem, but wow, very inconvenient while playing. I'm sure you guys know about this and have probably already fixed it, but still reporting just the same. Oh, and unlike all the other screenshots (which I had laboriously cut-and-pasted manually into Paint) this is an in-game screenshot. Of course, absolutely nothing from the city screen appears. Going to keep badgering on this until I get word that it's going to be fixed.
One other thing I should mention. Opening up the F4 screen sometimes caused a crash; I got this multiple times at different points of the game. Probably caused by the multiple leaderheads on the "Relations" screen crashing my computer's memory, but still very inconvenient. Oh, and the leaderhead animations were a HUGE drain on my computer's performance all throughout this game. Every time I would talk to one of the leaders, the game would SLOOOOOWWWWW DOOOOWWWWNNNNN. I'm not running the greatest computer in the world here (this one is 3 years old), but it was less than optimal.
This map looks a lot better than a couple of centuries earlier. I still have two more cities to place, one on the plains tile west of Athens on the coast and another on an unclaimed island north of Athens to grab the crabs up there. The only bad news is that Nappy has stuck the city of Marseilles in between Rheims and Orleans. That city would eventually expand its borders and take away the gems at Orleans! *sigh*
Meanwhile, Lizzie is quitely running away with the game. She adopted Free Market in 1200 - um, I was not close to Economics at the time. 2 turns later she researched Liberalism, further extending her lead. This ain't looking good, folks. I did managed to trade Music for Machinery and Optics, one of the more profitable tech deals I made, but I was quite a ways behind. I needed to cut down that jungle and run some "cottage cheese" in there to get my research going. That was the plan, at least.
A quick thumbs-up for everyone working on the new interface. This tech screen on the Foreign Advisor panel is just outstanding. It clearly displays in easy-to-read icons what techs you have, what the AI has, and whether or not they would be willing to trade. Fantastic stuff. Don't go changing this around at all.
Two months before release, the familiar Civ4 interface was starting to appear. I very much preferred the clean blue look of this interface to the ancient-era brown one that had been around earlier in testing.
In the midst of this intense tech race, Napoleon decides to declare war on me in 1360. Oh great, this is JUST what I need!
Cutting the sugar resource near Rheims has plunged several of my cities into unhappiness. As for my cities... they are decently defended, but Nappy is bringing a LOT of units. I drop research to 0% as you see above and upgraded for all I was worth. Fortunately, I had had the forsight to put walls in both Orleans and Rheims, and City Defense II longbows behind walls do not fear Horse Archers. Even so, Nappy threw so many Horse Archers at me that it was close going at times. He clearly still was in love with horses, but had no iron for knights, so Horse Archers it continued to be. Despite a lot of close calls, I managed to survived without losing anything more than some tile improvements, getting peace in 1450. It was quite close at several points; with bad dice luck I could have lost a city. Dodged a bullet for sure during this war.
There are my cities at the end of this latest French war (third one, I believe). The unhappiness was solved pretty easily just by reconnecting my disconnected happiness resources. That also does a good job of showing all of my cities. But now I was even FURTHER behind Elizabeth on the tech front, as she was up to Democracy and I still wasn't close. If she gets the Statue of Liberty... ouch. Her score topped 2000 in 1545AD - I was at 1359. Wow. Having your own huge continent to yourself sure helps. I did manage to build the Taj Mahal using my marble, which definitely helped out. I powered through 3 techs in the 8 turns of golden age research and improved my situation quite a bit.
Meanwhile, Napoleon was using this period to immediately leap back into war; he declared on Isabella in 1525. Nappy had the personality of a total psychopath in this game; at some point, he declared war on everyone on my continent. And there was almost no point when he was NOT at war with someone. Of course this left him backwards, isolated, and weak - such a personality is inevitably self-destructive. But... if this AI personality is only adopted rarely (like 10-20% of the time) and only by the very aggressive AI civs (Nappy, Monty, Temujin, etc.) I think it would add some nice spice to the game. So long as it it one of several possible personalities for these leaders, it would be a good addition. But if certainly leaders ALWAYS behave this way, it would be very bad. I think we're closer to the first than the second, just want to be careful that we don't screw up the balance on this. Remember, multiple possible personalities for each leader, scaled by their aggression level.
Adopting Free Religion in 1630 improved relations with Isabella to the point that she was willing to Open Borders and trade with me. That was certainly a first. By this point, I was on good relations with everyone except Nappy, for obvious reasons. I had gotten a Great Engineer instead of the Great Artist I wanted in 1615, but that allowed me to rush about half of the Statue of Liberty and build it myself (even without copper) in 1695. What a nice boost for me - but Elizabeth had reached Democracy in 1450 (!!!) and she did have copper. How she did not build the wonder herself, I have no clue. That's something else that Soren should take a look at; I'll throw in a save game from around that date too so he can investigate. Certainly with that kind of a tech lead, and such a strong wonder, the AI really should build it!
I found a bug on the tech screen in the process of this game that probably no one has come across yet. This is in 1700; I have just researched Assembly Line and traded it for Steel and Astronomy. Basically, the tech screen does NOT update to show what techs are behind the ones that you may have just traded for. For example, Lizzie is up quite a few more techs than just Communism! But I can't "see" them because I didn't have the tech pre-requisites at the start of my turn. After trading for Astronomy, I should have been able to see that Lizzie has Physics. So the screen is not updating when you make tech trades during your turn, and of course it should be doing so. A minor little thing, but should still be taken care of.
By 1700AD, I was still alive and kicking, with a fair chance to compete in the space race. I beelined for Rocketry as fast as possible, skipping the entire bottom part of the tree (at least for now) in order to get the Apollo Program in play as quickly as possible. Discovered Artillery in 1730, which allowed me to see that Elizabeth already had Rocketry (as well as everything else I could see, naturally). She and Cyrus both had Rocketry already, and may have had it for some time, but were quite slow to build the Apollo Program. More on this in a minute.
When I was halfway through my own research of Rocketry, Napoleon decided to get cute and declared war once again. Argh!
I was totally unafraid of Nappy's attack. I had Infantry, and he was primarily attacking me with - guess what? - Horse Archers still! 
But it did necessitate dropping science down to 0% for another round of upgrades just to be safe, and so it slowed me down just a bit more in the space race. Lizzie sure doesn't have to deal with a psychotic maniac attacking her every couple of centuries! Over the course of this war, I lost one infantry and a couple of boats - Nappy's armies basically drowned in their own blood. Why would horse archers attack infantry fortified in a city? I mean, what is the AI thinking when it does that?!
It was not a good performance from the AI. Now Napoleon did throw in a couple of rifles and grenadiers, but the bulk of the assault was still horse archers. He used a fair number of cats too, but they were hopelessly outdated by this point. Of course, with Nappy so badly behind in technology (look at his score above to see how far back he was), it was madness to declare war on me, so I'm not quite sure what he could have done better. Waiting until he reached cavs to declare war probably would have been a good idea. The main result of the war was that I razed Marseilles and re-gained control of the gems tile that I had lost culturally. Got peace in 1790, by 1800 I had fixed my happiness problems and was back to running research at full capacity.
Back to the main focus on the space race. Lizzie finally built the Apollo Program in 1800; with some help from a Great Engineer I had saved, I finished it in 1815. Cyrus also completed the Apollo Program in 1815, so we had a 3-way space race on our hands! Lizzie of course would be the main competition.
At the time that I built the Apollo Program, Elizabeth already had almost all of the techs on the tree (she really was THAT far ahead). However... she was slow building her parts. My smaller civ was keeping pace on SS part construction, even as I was still researching most of the parts. Heck, I was still building factories, coal plants, and labs too! I was doing my best to juggle the various parts and research paths for the fastest possible outcome - it was quite a lot of fun. The AI didn't seem to be handling it quite as well, however...
Meanwhile, Caesar decided to pick apart Napoleon's shattered and backwards civ, declaring war in 1820. This was clearly the end for Nappy (Paris fell in 1845), and I would have liked to pile on the war, but simply couldn't divert any resources away from the space race. Izzy got in on the feeding frenzy too, declaring war in 1856 and taking a city. Nappy was destroyed in 1866 - I wasn't exactly shedding any tears. On the plus side, a Great Artist I generated really expanded my borders in the new city I built in the open territory.
Lacking copper certainly didn't help in my efforts to build the spaceship. I caught a MAJOR break in 1886 when Athens generated a Great Engineer; with all its wonders, it had about a 20% chance to get any of the 5 types, so this was a great stroke of luck. My smaller cities concentrated on the SS Casings and Thrusters while Athens built the individual parts (for this reason, I had to stay in Bureaucracy even though Universal Suffrage would have helped out my research). Yes, in the end it was production of the parts and not researching the techs that would prove to be critical in the space race. I like this, since you can't win the game solely by having a lot of commerce. You need to have decent production as well; this makes the spaceship victory a little more balanced (IMO).
So that Great Engineer allowed me to rush about 2/3 of one of the really expensive SS parts (it was the SS Engine; I got 925 shields out of its 1600, seems about right). But in 1902, Lizzie completed two more parts to have everything except the SS Engine done. She's only one part away from launching! But I only need 3 more parts myself; Corinth was almost done the SS Docking Bay, Athens will finish the SS Engine in 1910, and then I only have the SS Stasis Chamber to go. Looks like it's coming down to the wire!
I have one final trump card. By coincidence, Delphi was about to produce a Great Person, and since it had been running 3 Engineers with its factory for ages, it's sure to get a Great Engineer (80% chance). So it plays out like this: Delphi produces a GrEngineer in 1908. Athens builds the SS Engine in 1910, swaps to SS Stasis Chamber and uses the Engineer to get 925 of its 1000 shields, allowing me to build it in 1912 and:
Last in score, still missing all kinds of optional techs, a tiny army compared to the massive AI militaries, but little Alexander won the game. What a game from start to finish! Without a doubt, the most difficult and most satisying game of Civ4 I have played so far. I didn't get a chance to explore the naval AI or the draft, but I hope you'll forgive me for it. I had to do everything possible just to survive!
After playing an earlier test build of Civ4 where projects couldn't be rushed by Great Engineers or cash spending, this build was back to having that mechanic in place, only to be removed again at a later date. I think it's better for gameplay purposes that projects can't be rushed even though that late pair of Great Engineers saved my bacon in this game.
As soon as the game ended, I opened up Debug Mode (Ctrl-Z) in order to take a look at what the AI was doing. The AI still needs a great deal of work when it comes to building the spaceship. Elizabeth's effort here was very poor. With a gigantic lead in technology over my civ, the AI was still beaten in the space race. And... it wasn't really that close either. Lizzie was still 14 turns away from launching at the end. FOURTEEN! Look:
Nottingham is an impressive city, no doubt (and Lizzie almost has Future Tech 3!) but it's only getting 40 shields? At first I thought, "the AI is building this in the wrong city", but Nottingham actually had more production than pretty much any of the other AI cities. From what I saw here, the AI is failing to improve its production base using factories and power plants. That's part of the reason why spaceship production is lagging; the AI isn't increasing its production enough. Here on the final turn of the game, 1912, London was still building a factory. LONDON! It still didn't have one! These problems get hidden by the AI's large cost discounts on the higher difficulties, but it's still there, and it's a problem. Not to mention the fact that the AI civs build TOO MANY COTTAGES - they research great, no doubt, but when it comes to building the spaceship? Not so good. Lizzie is running Universal Suffrage and getting extra production from those towns, as she should, but it's still not enough shields.
And another problem for the AI's spaceship production: the AI is not building enough labs. I checked every English city, and only one of them had a lab. ONE! Since labs add +50% spaceship production, this hurts them immensely when it comes to the space race. (Since the AI seems to be avoiding coal plants and labs, perhaps that's due to the fact that they add unhealthiness? Those buildings are so important, the AI MUST be told to build them anyway!) So to go back to our above example, Nottingham has no power plant and no lab. Think that's slowing it down at all? Lizzie's had the part in production for a good 10 turns already, and it's going to take her another 14 to finish. If the AI had done a credible job of building the spaceship, I never would have had a chance to win.
Having run over 100 games of Civ4 AI Survivor at this point, well, let's just say that the AI still has a lot of problems researching and building the spaceship.
Meanwhile, Caesar's only just starting his spaceship, but he's making equally egregious decisions:
Building an SS Casing in Seville - 26 turns for a CASING?! Oh man. Soren needs to get out the whip and knock some sense into these AI civs.
Cyrus - I have no clue what he's up to. Apparently, he's decided to go insane:
Uh, why are all of his cities starving like that? Hmm, let's look inside Persepolis then:
Umm...
Yeah. Soren MIGHT want to look at the savegame and see what's happening here.
I'm putting 7 save files into this zip folder. One from 500BC, when I first fought Napoleon; two from 1360 and 1450, when he fought me the third time and was still using horse archers; and 4 from the space race era, from 1700 (around when Lizzie got Rocketry), 1790 (around when she built the Apollo Program), 1835 (race in progress), and 1912 (the last turn). Hopefully there should be some good stuff in there.
Some final stats... I ended up with 22% in both land area and population; Elizabeth was at 23% in each. Almost caught the leader in those stats... On the last turn of the game, I was actually out-researching Lizzie, 1642 beakers/turn to 1396/turn (with both of us at 100% research). Ha! That's my favorite stat of the game.
I hope everyone else who tried this game enjoyed it - it was NOT an easy one. Now it's time to go take a look at v.76...
