Brett's Games

Quad Gold

A Silly Rich Start

CIV IV
Beyond The Sword
Game Save File
003-quad-gold-4000BC

Four gold, two cow, and two flood plains revealed, it is a very good start, folks talk about dual gold, well, this is quad gold

Prince

Dutch
William van Oranje

Custom Continents
  Cylindrical
  Large World Size
  Temperate Climate
  Medium Sea Level

  18 Civilizations

Victory Conditions
  Conquest
  Domination
  Diplomatic

Settings
  Beyond the Sword 3.19
  BUG Mod 4.5 [Build 2221]
  BULL 1.4 [Build 243]
  BAT Mod 4.1

Goal
I had intended to get better at my city specialization skills. But instead, I perfected my use of The Whip (the Conscription mechanic later in the game being similar).

Reasons
Oddly (or maybe not so oddly at this point), I had wanted a fun easy game coming back down to Noble after my first Monarch win. And having a four gold city seemed like just the ticket for that. Long story short, a reversal to Quad Cow supported by two gold would have been a lot (like a lot) more powerful.

Informal Rules
Must research Technologies in order. And then (for me, at least), I will take game breaks breaks between technological advances, so I think about the game more and feel less rushed. In other words, I have a desire to kill that one more turn compulsion by whatever means necessary.

Shows an in progress tech tree with certain tech options crossed out, because only techs in the leftmost available column may be researched in this game

Since everything in the first row shown (Literature, Calendar, Construction, Currency, and Machinery) has been researched, anything in the second row (Drama, Engineering, or Code of Laws) can be researched, but nothing in the third column (Music, etc) can be.

Or in other words, no Tech Bee Lining is allowed. Techs must be researched in order.


Strategies & Spoilers

So don't read beyond this point, if you don't want to know.

Same Starting Image as Above

I did not find the four gold resources to be that important. Without food, I couldn't work all of them, so the third and fourth gold never mattered until later in the game. At which point, nothing about the start really matters.

Image of Core City Placement and preparations for war with Brennus

I played this map (at least) three times. And by the time I was on the final play through, keeping all four gold in the fat cross of my capital was no longer important.

Hemming in my opponents (Brennus, in this case) mattered more.

Foreign advisor, Relations, Diplomacy Screen, world war, about half the civs are my vassals and I am at war with four other civs, so lots of red on this

I took out the residents of my home continent (made them my Vassals) in the order I met them (Celtic, German, Egyptian). But that is a rather boring detail post game... to me, at least.

So, let me share the above Foreign Advisor Relations screen with you. About half the Civilizations in this game are my Vassals and I am stacking up the wars.

First, since I had way more power (number of troops, if nothing else) than the other Civilizations, it didn't really matter what I did, as there was no danger of a meaningful counter attack.

Second, I have found the other Civilizations do not want to make Peace or Capitulate unless we've been at war for over ten turns. Well, it doesn't take that long to take over a city. And most of my adversaries Capitulated after I took a single city (especially if that city was their capital). So, declaring war well in advance allowed them to surrender faster.

Third, back when warring was more difficult (against my first two opponents: Brennus and Frederick), declaring war slightly in advance of my need allowed these two jolly fellows to send their troops across the border into my territory. And thus, minimized any war weariness that is caused from fighting on foreign soil.

In short, I don't get much from a sneak attack, so I'm not bothering... at the moment. One never knows how these things will change with time.

Small Cities by the Sea

In the early AD's (1AD to 1000AD, let's say), everyone is in expansion mode. I say, settle whatever (and I mean, whatever) you can get your hands on... Seaside Cities, especially.

I would have thoughts this a crap location, but the two hills gives the fish something to work, and that's enough, these three images are mainly to show the real estate potential
Two Fish
25 land tiles, which is not great for a city, but land tiles are needed for the points, this secures the land and denies another
Two Hills
At the end of the game, it only yielded twenty tiles, which means Frederick is better at cultural expansion than Egypt
Works


Here's the land-grab view of a city I called Two Fish. It's actually a fairly nice city of this genre. I was happily settling cities with a single fish and a hill, so this had twice the potential (two fish and two hills).

I call it the land-grab view, because one of the major reasons for settling such a city (in my so ever humble opinion) is ownership of the surrounding land tiles. Crap land is, after all, still land. And control of land is a key game play mechanic, which goes into scoring and determination of victory.

So, for the price of two work boats and a few turns of deficit, I break even, or turn a two commerce profit
+ 02c
A whole heck of a lot later, after a bunch of whips, I am turning a nice profit, paying me back for my investment
+ 17c
Here we have the late game, there is some degree of cost, the garrison is heavy, but it is turning a sold twenty commerce a turn, which is worth a tech or two along the way, and this is pre library, and in a game that I turned slavery off relatively quickly after founding these cities
+ 23c


The thing to note is how quickly the city turned a commerce profit.

Also note (as I would have never done this), late game, my automated workers built watermills on the river, which are pretty nice plots, better than the mines. So in hindsight, I may have been better off building this city one square to the south-west (and thus, capturing both sides of the river).

This is artic circle city, a bunch of tundra forest, not much good in my opinion, maybe a great place for a national park, who knows, but it is ocean side, which as the Dutch, I find nice, actually, I have always tended to settle by the ocean
- 01c
Same Artic Circle city, which covers the same basic idea as the previous Two Fish grouping of images, a very poor city site
+ 07c
Ultimately, what I find compelling about the game and what others do, is different, I want a conventional win, or at least, do now, and the concept of milking a win for points, sounds boring, I mean, I want a high score, but I do not want to delay the win for a higher score
+ 17c


As I tried to evaluate whether this sort of limited resource city works or not (as in, is it ultimately beneficial and should I do this in the future), the beginning point of my analysis was the commerce potential. And the main reason for this was because during the point in the game when this sort of city is settled, commerce is at a premium. Let's be real, these are not Second City locations. We are talking late REX (late rapid early expansion, so the end game of that mode of play) here.

But beyond commerce, these cities also produce stuff. And even without the Dyke or Maori Statues (both discussed below), whipping and conscription (discussed even further below) allow this type of city to produce an adequate supply of military units.

Whale Fin is the name of the city shown in the next three images, the first always being near settlement, the second maybe halfway to maturity, and the third at end game
- 02c
Whale Fin was named such because it had a whale resource and because it was powered by Whale Oil rather than Fish or Clams it did not take off until much later, after I had researched Optics
+ 04c
The Water Food Resource powers the whip, that is the reason for settling next to it, eh, maybe the trade potential as well, but I likely do not micro to that extent
+ 44c


Thus, I expect to settle the Arctic in future games whenever I can come up with at least one sea resource and a hill or two in the Fat Cross.

Preferably, by a river, those Water Wheels are nice.

Copper Head, which is covered in the next three images, had both a fish and a land resource, copper, by viture of which it was a lot stronger
+ 07c
Still, scrappy land, but not as bat as ice and tundra, and the hammers that copper brings in makes all the difference while building up infrastructure
+ 23c
This city was settled to block Frederick, give me the copper, and because, well, land, it is what the game is about in many ways
+ 100c


At some point, I should note that I am playing the Dutch. And their Unique Building is the Dyke (replaces Levee, available with Steam Power), which provides +1h (an extra hammer) on ocean tiles. For the late game, it really is an awesome Unique Building. But on the other hand, by the time it comes into play, the game should already be decided.

I settled Baja Coast during my infill phase, after I had cut both Frederick and Brennus off, prior to opening borders with Frederick, it is a mediocre location, but making the best of mediocrity is part of utilizing ones resources
- 01c
The game plan was to pump ships out of this city, but Im not so disciplined, it made a bunch of ships, but a bunch of other stuff, as well
+ 21c
34 base production is not bad at all, and put this in the top half of my production cities
+ 99c


And for complete coverage, my Maori Statues city, which acts much like a Levee (or a second Levee), so +2h (two hammers with both the Maori Statues and a Levee) from ocean tiles.

17 ocean tiles x 2 hammers each = 34 hammers, just from the ocean.

Not bad.

Spare the Whip
Spoil the City

What would a Gold Game be without a discussion on the merits of slavery?

The Whip Explained

It took me a long time to understand the mechanics of slavery. But it's not that hard. And now that I do understand it, I'm not quite sure why it took so long to wrap my mind around the concept in the first place.

The first whip in a city costs a variable amount of population (usually, one, two, or three, and I think one gets 30 hammers per population, but clearly not an important point to me) and causes +1 unhappiness for 10 turns.

And that last (the unhappiness) is the important thing to remember, the whip causes:
+1 unhappiness for +10 turns
And if the current unhappiness from whipping (conscription, and events, I think they all use the same unhappiness counter) is zero, the calculation is simple enough: +1 for 10.

On the other hand, if it has only been five turns since the whip was used, a city will be currently at +1 for 5, and the new unhappiness must be added to that.
Existing:  +1 for  5
This Whip: +1 for 10
New Anger: +2 for 15
Five more turns was added to the existing value. So if one whips again in two turns, the new unhappiness is +3 for 23 turns (and it's a full +3 unhappiness for all of those 23 turns).
Existing:  +2 for 13
This Whip: +1 for 10
New Anger: +3 for 23
Thus, unhappiness can quickly get out of hand. The trick (and this is the whole of the trick) is to never whip, while suffering unhappiness caused by the whip.

And I'm no expert on Conscription, but I believe it works on the exact same mechanic with the numbers only slightly different: costs two population for +3 unhappiness for 10 turns (probably with different population costs depending upon the unit, but I know not).

But by the time one can Conscript, my cities are usually pretty happy, so it doesn't matter as much.

Anyhow, that's what I know about Slavery and Whipping. But I plan on playing Montezuma next (the Wizard of the Whip), so I may have some updated info in my next post.

The Walk Through

Okay. There's not going to be a walk through.

Honestly, the above is likely as close to a walk through as I want to get: just throwing out a few ideas, as to what I learned. And not a heck of a lot more.

I played this map three times.

Quad Gold: Game One

Here is the save from the first game.

Initial Save
003-quad-gold-4000BC

Final Turn (Game One)
003-quad-gold-game-one- AD-1595

All the initial saves are the same in the Quad Gold Series, so I will not repeat them from play-through to play-through.

And though it's been a while, as I recall, I was killing it on the first game and victory was a certainty, so I decided to quit. One thing is for sure, the next (non Quad Gold) game I played was on monarch.

Quad Gold: Game Two

While playing the Quad Gold map a second time, I lost heart.

So, I have a scrap city in the artic and so does Egypt, is Egypts scrap city worth a war, it is, as anything is worth a war, but if those are the best pickings, maybe one should have already won

Here's the final situation.

And the question is: Is the Egyptian city of Giza worth fighting a war over?

Probably not.

I mean, sure, why not?

But then, since that's the type of spoils I was looking to capture, it was clear my mind was in the wrong place.

So, I replayed the map again (for a third time) with the aim of REX'ing (playing the rapid early expansion phase) better.

Final Game State (Game Two)
003-quad-gold-game-two-AD-1150

LogFile (Game Two)
This is the log file from BAT's (or is it BUG's) auto-log feature. One of the things I want to do (long term) is pull game average statistics from my games (when are the Pyramids typically built, when is Liberalism typically discovered, and so on). Thus, these files may be of interest to another for similar (or divergent) reasons.
003-quad-gold-game-two-log

Game Notes
So if you really want a detailed play-by-play walk through, this is it. There are no pictures, however.
003-quad-gold-game-two-notes

Quad Gold: Game Three

The third time is the charm. This was a game to be proud of.

Final Game State
Domination Victory
50,000 odd points
003-quad-gold-game-three-AD-1907

Auto Log
003-quad-gold-game-three-log

Game Notes
003-quad-gold-game-three-notes

Finally, the Replay, which I may stop including, as I believe all information may be included in the final save.

Post Game Replay
003-quad-gold-replay

And that's that!

Now that I understand Slavery, I want to tackle the Lord God of the Whip.

Thus, next up: