The Glade 4.0

Uh.. Yeah.

I'm on my third game.
Chieftain (easy diplomatic victory through buying favor with a bunch of city-states) as Napoleon. Started out thinking I'd go for a cultural victory, ended up having too much fun kicking Ramses and El-Rashid's asses with musketeers and Foreign Legion, ended up with too big an empire to effectively culturally advance somewhere near the beginning of the Industrial Age, decided to **** it and go for domination of my continent.

Prince (came in 3rd after Songhai ran away with the win on victory points after essentially conquering what looked like most of the 16 City States that didn't make it to the end of the game -- the 4 that did bordered me and had me playing Big Brother to keep the bullies away. I was barely into the Modern Era) as Catherine. Again, figured I'd go for a cultural victory and a bit of a seafaring nation, but again, ended up a bit too Imperialistic as I sought out strategic resources to play with (horses for Cossacks -- which are super-fun units -- and iron for frigates). Again, I was easily keeping a very aggressive Caesar at bay, but meanwhile Songhai and China ran away with their continents and out-victoried me by size of empire and, in Songhai's case, keeping up with my wonder production on top of that.

Third game, I'm playing on Warlord. Switched back to French; I figure the inherent cultural bonus pre-Steam Power will roughly equal the culture on the Russian barracks replacement that doesn't go obsolete, and this way I'm not tied to strategic resources to keep powerful military units around to keep a small empire from looking too tasty. So far, I've kept it to 2 cities, with the second grabbed for its value as a port. I'm kicking Montezuma off my corner of the world; he got too close to my little port for comfort. I'm considering grabbing his capital as a puppet; I'll have to double-check what that does to my upkeep and policy thresholds, first. Seems a shame to raze a capital with a wonder or two.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I noticed you've been playing the hell out of this game Kaffis. I bought it a couple days ago, and I must say I'm impressed. It does seem slightly more simplistic, but in a good way. Hopefully this weekend I'll have a chance to put in some more hours.

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I'm actually surprised how much of a CPU hog this game is. Huge maps bog down my laptop as the game progresses, with its 2.8 GHz quad core hyperthreaded i7. It can take over a minute after hitting the end turn button

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I'm in favor of not being able to stack troops. Makes things a little more realistic and strategic. Plays really well.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Taly, everything has become CPU-bound of late. The GPUs are just generally that good these days, and the screen resolutions haven't been inflating past 1920x1200 or 1080p resolutions, for the most part.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I've been off work since Tuesday (vacation. Had to work Monday because, God help me (or, more accurately, my students) they roped me into teaching a Hardware class on Mondays), and have been going on 10-12 hour Civilization benders. Where does the time go?

Devoured by excellent gaming.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Oh, I don't disagree. I'm just surprised it's that CPU bound. I mean, I don't think it's doing any more calculations in between turns than Civ IV was doing, is it? It does not seem like a more complex game, by any means. But instead of a single core, 1.8 GHz Athlon XP with two gigs of slow RAM, it's got a quad core, hyperthreaded 2.8 GHz i7 and 8 gigs of fast RAM -- i would think the delay between turns would have shrunken, not grown.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

That's the thing, though -- it's not just AI calculations and city upkeep that's hitting the CPU, anymore. The CPU is still trying to shove data at the graphics card, and that data's what's been increasing since the resolutions stagnated... things like data for physics calculations and texture mapping.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The more I play this game, the more I realize I'm going to be spending a lot of hours playing it further. I finally beat the easy tutorial. Most of the time I spent on it was just getting used to the game. I wasn't sure I wanted to win by domination victory, but that's what ended up happening. I suppose that's probably the easiest way to go about a duel map, especially with the difficulty set way down. Next, I want to play a longer game that involves more exploration, as well as multiple civilizations.

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There's a tutorial?

Heheh. I guess I've been playing Civs long enough that the notion doesn't even occur to me. I just dive in on a lower setting and let the advisors and Civopedia bring me up to speed on additional features.

But yeah, it's a game where, if you want to explore the game, there's always something new to try.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I tried as Egypt, without ever expanding beyond my capital city. (Now that said, I made allowances for making puppet states out of nations who attack me or my city state allies. Most of what used to be Iroqois territory now answers to me, but i'm not directly controlling any of their cities.) I went with the "Legendary Start" advanced option, since it (quite fairly) gives all starting capital cities some wonderful resources right off the bat, which seemed like a smart idea for someone who only intended to ever use one city.

I haven't won yet (though I think I am going to get a cultural victory. I just unlocked the Utopia Project to start off the 19th century), but Egypt seems like a great civ to do this with. The 20% bonus production to wonders means I've only missed 3 wonders on my way up the ladder. Two of those I missed due to being landlocked (great lighthouse and colossus), the other due to having no mountain near me (manchu pichu). After getting stonehenge so early on, you remain so far ahead of the cultural curve that the other nations are realy going to have to band together to defeat me militarily, or else I've got this beaten in the next 60 turns.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

What difficulty is that on, Talya?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That was just chieftan. (didn't feel like trying out someting new on warlord.) I forgot i also missed taj mahal.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I've been playing for I think less than a week and I'm still on my first world. I've now taken over my continent and it's down to me, Egypt and England for rule of the world.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Playing as the Aztecs, I'm not well on my way to winning a domination victory on Chieftain difficulty. There was a civilization I went to war with, then signed a peace treaty with, in exchange for a lots in return. Last night, I destroyed two of their three cities, after the peace treaty expired, of course. Now, I'm just waiting to build up a strong enough force to take over the Germans, who are hostile to me, and also blocking the last city from the civilization I almost defeated.

After I win a domination victory, I'd really like to try another approach. Thus far, it's just too tempting to take over cities. I don't even know how you start to win through the cultural or political methods.

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For culture, the key is wonders and to restrain your appetite for conquest. Staying small will make it much easier to land the policies you need before the turn limit causes a score victory for somebody.

Staying small doesn't mean don't keep a standing military. It's pretty important; otherwise you look like a tasty, wonder-filled morsel for nearby civs. The good news, though, is that happiness isn't generally an issue, especially not if you keep a few city-states happy. Build wonders, monuments, temples, maybe opera houses. Broadcast towers are godsends. And then start buying up policies as you qualify for them, focusing your purchases on 5 trees. Fill in all 5 completely, and you win.

Diplomatic victories are also relatively simple: build the UN (though, if somebody else does, you can still manage to win, it's just a bit easier if you build it, since you get an extra vote that way), and then start bribing city states left and right to ally level and keeping them there. The city-state policy tree is vastly helpful here. Periodically, the game will call for a UN vote. Your allied city states will vote for you. If you get enough votes, you win the game. If somebody else gets enough votes (because you haven't been showering the city-states with enough attention and gifts), you lose. Note: This also means keeping enough city-states around to vote for you to win. Least number of votes I've seen required is 10. This may mean you need to wage war to liberate some city-states some other civ has conquered.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

What's this "turn limit?"

Marathon-length ftw.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Yeah, once I finish my cultural victory and the little game I started as Americans on Industrial Era (btw, starting later is interesting -- they give you extra settlers, some workers, and a handful of era-appropriate military units; I started with 3 settlers, 5 riflemen, and a worker), my next game is probably going to be marathon, God help me. In addition, cities you settle start with bonus population (5, for Industrial) and a slew of buildings pre-built. Great way to get you up to speed for the intended era.

Anyways, I made that game because I wanted to play around a bit with air units, which I hadn't gotten a chance to do thus far, aside from building a carrier and one fighter in my first game.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

As a side note, I **** hate Steam with the passion of a thousand suns.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Curious as to why?

I'm not a huge fan, but i've bought a couple games off of it and never had a problem.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The opposite of this is true for myself. I don't know what I'd do with Steam's sales in my life.

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I've gotten well over my Steam distrust. Steam's awesome.

Steam still sucks, but I tolerate it.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Aside from various philosophical differences between me and some of the core tenets, requirements, and implementations of Steam's design and structure, this particular issue had to do with the fact that I couldn't use the game I'd paid good money for because Steam created a software issue for itself I had to take 40 minutes to figure out and resolve.

In other words, I had to do software support for 2 pieces of software, when I really only give a **** about 1.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I use steam for "bargain bin" software. They tend to have some neat games on really cheap every once in a while. That's it.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █