PrivateJ0hn vs MrGameTheory (Video available)

[PrivateJohn]

Ladies & gentlemen, i believe this is the moment you all been waiting for....without further adieu, i present you the game of the century :

That's right, master of the "legendary" unbeatable imbalance Rome Megacity.

We play 2 game, both rank match. As it stands, the score is 1:1.

Game 1
I lost in this game because i wasn't using my original Chinese strategy, instead i use the one against Rusher/Arab, thanks to mxzx3 i have "rusher"phobia in every game nowadays. Anyhow...it cost me a lost by researching Masonry & Ceremonial Burial which was unnecessary & disadvantage for tech players because MGT is not rushing nor culture flipping, his culture is equally bad as mine. He won by 800AD. However losing is not always bad, this give me a good grasp at his strategy because the first game I kept talking to the AI & found out his cities, even the Palace are always empty! So i know what to do next round.

*I didn't edit a video for the first game because i assume nobody want to see him win because he already has the fame of "unbeatable", right? Anyway if anyone has any doubt on the authenticity of this, i still have the full game record both at the size of 300MB each.


Game 2
Instead of making the same mistake, why not i exploit the same thing? I just use my original strategy which is very vulnerable to rusher & culture flipping BUT tech advance is incredibly fast even without a megacity.Since there are no rusher in the game, all is good.
The game end at about 1100AD as he quits,and I have an average population of 10 in each cities, 100% lead in tech.

Here's the video :
Youtube Link
I've edited it with my commentary, brief description on my tech research & highlighting only the interesting part. It's 10 minutes long as it will explain everything. (I hope)

Ending comment : This is my honest opinion, after playing MGT i really think he lack the real world experience with Human player. He is playing the game as if he is facing the AI in singleplayer. I really doubt he stand a chance against aggressive player namely mxzx3 etc. Even for a non-rusher, you can keep up with him or even exceed him in tech. Just remember to harass him at some point, otherwise his Rome megacity will indeed be "unbeatable".

Hope this thread can turn into a battleground among the top players too where they can meet-up for some fun time. I love challenge like this and I will not act immature when losing.

[MorteEterna]

Great! Finally somebodies will believe me. Ah, i have known that.

And now it could an answer about the question "how to beat some archers". And it's not arabians but china

[PrivateJohn]

...based on his conclusion, human player will just attack him like the mindless AI with legion army after legion army.

[MorteEterna]

...based on his conclusion, human player will just attack him like the mindless AI with legion army after legion army.

You make me thinking about a new fast strategy, but i think it won't be as my last strategies. I was thinking as i said that MGT will be easy (maybe) to beat. And before this video, i always was saying about "this is not unbeatable"

[Masterofkills09]

lol he left the game after complaning at all the lag

[Dire Wombat]

Congrats, PrivateJohn. This is good to see. I was one of the people suggesting that the Roman megacity might badly imbalance multiplayer; on paper, it looked to me (and presumably others) like one ought to be able to build adequate defenses while still executing the strategy, leaving a counter somewhat dependent on luck. With the success of some rush strategies, your China strategy, etc., the Roman megacity in practice is looking more like one strategy among several, each with its own strengths and weaknesses (which of course is exactly what we want to see... no one wants to see multiplayer turn into Ridiculously Fast Economic Victory vs. Rushing to Stop the Ridiculously Fast Economic Victory). Since "More than two viable multiplayer strategies" is an important ingredient for a fun online game, this is good news. It's still possible that some permutation of one particular strategy may emerge as badly imbalanced, but so far things seem okay.

(Oh, one other note: I'm curious as to which strategies work best in a free-for-all environment with good players. That's going to be fairly different than head-to-head, since King AI lags behind even a modest human player, even more so if handicaps are on. I was doubting the effectiveness of MorteEterna's Arabian horseman rush, for instance, in another thread because I was picturing a free-for-all with good players. I wasn't considering head-to-head, where a rusher doesn't need to worry too much about being rushed themselves by a third party, and where AI cities will tend to be easier to take by culture and/or horsemen, thus providing additional cities. I'm still skeptical about whether it would still be so overpowering in a high-skill free-for-all, but I wasn't thinking about head-to-head at the time, where various Arabian rushes are probably fantastic)

[PrivateJohn]

^
I seldom play FFA so i am not exactly the right person to advice you on that. In morte's case, he could probably kill off the first person he sees nearest to his base in FFA but winning the game is entirely different story.

Anyway in FFA, things change. Even the best player could be struggling because the other 3 player can form a temporary alliance.

lol he left the game after complaning at all the lag

Throughout the game there wasn't any resynchronization, not even ONCE. Even if it lag, my screen would be lagging too because this is strategy game & not FPS where lag would benefit the host & vice versa.

[MorteEterna]

^
I seldom play FFA so i am not exactly the right person to advice you on that. In morte's case, he could probably kill off the first person he sees nearest to his base in FFA but winning the game is entirely different story.

Anyway in FFA, things change. Even the best player could be struggling because the other 3 player can form a temporary alliance.


Throughout the game there wasn't any resynchronization, not even ONCE. Even if it lag, my screen would be lagging too because this is strategy game & not FPS where lag would benefit the host & vice versa. If the other person lag, your screen will lag too.

In 20 minutes i have won 2 games. Last 3 games:

first: 11 turns to win
second: about 20 turns
third: about 30 turns after the beginning

And only 1 game to be first

However in FFA it is easier than playing vs AIs at the beginning, i explain: In 20 turns for example the AI will have an archer army, and a standard player, only 2 archers. However in my last game i was thinking that i couldn't finish the game fast because i could not play now i haven't seen my enemy in the first 20-25 turns and i was very worried because if i didn't kill him fast i could have to go and about 25-30 exp lost. However what happened??

While i was going to kill him with an horsemen army + 2 warriors armies..

A great artist appears (wow) so i flip his second city where i build a new horseman, but when he see all my troops, he quits (after he tried to attack a warrior using a horseman, but he lost). In the second game i had 2 veteran horsemen so fast because i had the seven cities of gold (I some gold from barbarian villages, so one said "there are the seven cities of gold bla bla bla..", i rushed a galley, i went there, so i rushed some horsemen and a new galley, and i won very fast

I think i could beat MGT very easy however seeing how he plays (Lol in 40-50 turns economic victory?). I think it was a bug/40% handicap/chieftain

PS: I could play vs some good players, but it the same because if i have one in 8-10 turns near to me, he will die, and when i have 2 capitals i will be advanced, so if i conquer 1 more it is good game. However if i have 2 capitals i have to build a lot of cities and take the democracy. I'm sure about that because in a FFA i was playing vs 2 greeks, 1 french and germans. I took the capital of greeks very fast and easy and he was about top10-15 (I used only warriors). The cause is:
Don't say that before i destroy you you can take masonry, free wall, an army of archers/pikemen, because it's not true. I destroyed him because he couldn't research while he was building units

[PrivateJohn]

What's the timeline of 40turns? BC or AD?

[MorteEterna]

What's the timeline of 40turns? BC or AD?

If you are talking about my games i won those games from the beginning, so it wasn't AD but BC

[PrivateJohn]

No no, i meant in 40 turns what's the time/age?

[MorteEterna]

No no, i meant in 40 turns what's the time/age?

It's 0. It doesn't say before or after.. It doesn't say BC or AD

[Magwill]

Good work! I just like that someone beat the tactic because it makes the game more fun. I personally tried the rome strategy today on deity. It worked really nice, but the AI is really stupid and weak even on deity... A human player would just board at one place and start taking over the feeding cities.

[Sigmakan]

Nice video! Just a preemptive warning, make sure this thread doesn't degrade into insulting other players and what not

I'll also move this into multiplayer forum.

I look forward to more videos :P

[WaVeShifT]

Nice video PrivateJohn
Nice to see the Roman Megacity tactic put into dust.

However in a FFA match i believe still that the roman tactic is pretty strong considering the following facts:
-Alot of players you meet are below your skills and therefore don´t disrupt your build strategy.
-Placing is key, if you are the only one who knows there is a dude going Megacity and you are across the world there is not that much you can do about it.

However this is just an observation, I myself have used both The ROman Megacity tactic and also my Chinaman adaptation of the Megacity tactic, nowadays though i prefer the Arabs since it´s a more fun game to play.

There were some things that suprised me though, since you two were so close to eachother , MGT should have really tried to switch tactic since he knew you were close and i guess he should have known that you were coming for him. Also he had basically a bottleneck city that he should have defended more and most of all had some kind of offence to retaliate on your troops.

I do believe that the best players are the ones that adapt quickly with the right medicine to an upcoming threat and quickly see the mistakes of the opponent Just a curiosity, did you have archer armies stationed at your cities? didn´t catch that on the vid.

Anyways great job and i hope that we will meet in a game someday

[PrivateJohn]

lol thx. Well you can always add me up and we can setup some game, rank or no rank.

I do not have archer but i put a warrior up the mountain to scout for enemy early in the game and it's shown in the video if you can catch a glimpse


However reason why i opt for mathematic first instead of othe tech because that's part of my defense because one catapult can kill an army of warrior or legion without fortification easily. Either way, i get my democracy/pikemen pretty early too. Mistake i did in my first game because i was playing too careful with all the defense and end up losing the tech race. So next game i figured he is not gona rush me, i might as well go for tech race and do last minute defense (gold rush) if required like MGT. Usually Rome can't beat the Chinese in tech early on so i've to utilize that golden moment.

Nice video PrivateJohn
There were some things that suprised me though, since you two were so close to eachother , MGT should have really tried to switch tactic since he knew you were close and i guess he should have known that you were coming for him. Also he had basically a bottleneck city that he should have defended more and most of all had some kind of offence to retaliate on your troops.

His best offensive units are Legion because obviously his tech is lagging behind me. So there is no way for him to retaliate and he spent ALOT of his gold in defense (he even rush the wall with gold) while my pikemen & catapult are camping outside his city without hampering my cities growth one bit.

Overall i can say this with confident, if MGT does not improve upon his megacity...he will not stand a chance against aggressive player especially good Arab players.

[Miz isHere]

Cant believe you lost to MrGametheory.

[PrivateJohn]

Please no name calling or the mod gona lock this thread up.

Care for a game? I've yet to play the no.1 guy on leaderboard.

[Latty]

unrelated.......

[MorteEterna]

I have beaten him 1 time very fast and easy, second time too but he wanted to continue the game and I had to go, but he was blocked and he was losing with his strategy, i was advanced than him in techs, i think it could be a 2-0/2-1 because I had to go, but he was blocked on all races

[PrivateJohn]

When did you play him?

[MorteEterna]

This morning, however I don't know if I could continue to play, wow, in a game (it gift me a win but he disconnected) I have lost about 370 exp. I have tried to play some games to be again the first but I don't know now I have about 1300.. I had 1580 before that bug and after that 1216.. However MGT now is the first, but only for a bug

[PhillyMike101]

This morning, however I don't know if I could continue to play, wow, in a game (it gift me a win but he disconnected) I have lost about 370 exp. I have tried to play some games to be again the first but I don't know now I have about 1300.. I had 1580 before that bug and after that 1216.. However MGT now is the first, but only for a bug

Its odd that you usually only lose because of a bug or because you have to go.

Why isnt a video available of you losing? It just comes off as you being a little to cocky for a guy winning 50% of the time. Good videos, though, I would just tone down the arrogance.

Anyways, In my recent games Ive been using Chinese because since the demo Ive been dying to try them out. I like them a lot because if you want to build those offensive/defensive units in a hurry you can just spam production.

[NorrecV]

Haha, he quit early. I hate quitters...

How do you guys play people who are actually good? I've been doing a lot of FFA games for less computers but no one is any good. They're all useless and its getting too easy to win. Half the time they just quit when they see anything with a military strength higher than that of a warrior army.

[MorteEterna]

Haha, he quit early. I hate quitters...

How do you guys play people who are actually good? I've been doing a lot of FFA games for less computers but no one is any good. They're all useless and its getting too easy to win. Half the time they just quit when they see anything with a military strength higher than that of a warrior army.

Who quits early? I have never quit but a game when I had to go (I was winning, it was about a month ago))

Its odd that you usually only lose because of a bug or because you have to go.

Why isnt a video available of you losing? It just comes off as you being a little to cocky for a guy winning 50% of the time. Good videos, though, I would just tone down the arrogance.

Anyways, In my recent games Ive been using Chinese because since the demo Ive been dying to try them out. I like them a lot because if you want to build those offensive/defensive units in a hurry you can just spam production.

Do you mean I'm a noob quitter or something similar? HOW could it be possible that winning I lost about 370 skill? However I could do videos but I have never done, and how could I do that without know I'm going to disconnect for a bug or I don't know what? I prefer make some photos. Who are you to say these things? (I want to know if I know you, no insults or other things..)

[NorrecV]

Oh I didn't notice this thread had 3 more pages, I was laughing at the megacity guy from post 1 who quit early and said "It was laggy, the lag lost me the game!"

Civs turn based, whats lag going to do?

[MorteEterna]

Oh I didn't notice this thread had 3 more pages, I was laughing at the megacity guy from post 1 who quit early and said "It was laggy, the lag lost me the game!"

Civs turn based, whats lag going to do?

However the strategy will fall for the update, but he said he has other strategies, and I think the megacity strategy isn't the best using Rome, there are a lot of ways I think

[Hodory]

Nice Video, Private John.

Upon reading a lot of MGT's posts around the forums here and others, I do believe that the guy is very skilled and knowledgeable about Civ in general. His long posts about the Rome mega city issue? I mostly agreed with what he had to say actually. And he was actually asking it to be removed. The only thing that alienated him seems to be that people believe he was too arrogant.

At any rate, I don't know why his defenses were so poor... I did see that he managed to put up a giant city towards the end though, but once that city is captured, it is game over for him.

Many people don't seem to understand how powerful that one extra population at the beginning is... in the case of the Chinese that is.

[exclamatio]

TnC exclamatio here, id love to play and beat both of you!

the gauntlet is set gentlemen, prepare to be humbled :P

i agree that the chinese extra population is fantastic, with average starts you can perform miracles

the only games ive struggled in ive had horrible starts

[CivRev Master]

Just because He's Ranked Number 1 On Head to Head Dosnt mean he's the best.
And Just because You beat him dosn't make you better.

Almost all CivRev Leaders have Great Perks/Faults You Just have to understand how the game is designed to play with them.

I issue challenges to all Great players out there, and no I dont go posting videos after I win.
Only Ranked 1v1

Must be in Top 40
Xbox Live Only
Precision00
Thank you,
CivRev Master

[Aztec Assassin]

Nice video PrivateJohn
Nice to see the Roman Megacity tactic put into dust.

However in a FFA match i believe still that the roman tactic is pretty strong considering the following facts:
-Alot of players you meet are below your skills and therefore don´t disrupt your build strategy.
-Placing is key, if you are the only one who knows there is a dude going Megacity and you are across the world there is not that much you can do about it.

However this is just an observation, I myself have used both The ROman Megacity tactic and also my Chinaman adaptation of the Megacity tactic, nowadays though i prefer the Arabs since it´s a more fun game to play.

There were some things that suprised me though, since you two were so close to eachother , MGT should have really tried to switch tactic since he knew you were close and i guess he should have known that you were coming for him. Also he had basically a bottleneck city that he should have defended more and most of all had some kind of offence to retaliate on your troops.

I do believe that the best players are the ones that adapt quickly with the right medicine to an upcoming threat and quickly see the mistakes of the opponent Just a curiosity, did you have archer armies stationed at your cities? didn´t catch that on the vid.

Anyways great job and i hope that we will meet in a game someday

One word that will kill a mega city nine out of ten times: nuke

[Phantom11392]

One word that will kill a mega city nine out of ten times: nuke

Sorry but are you retarded? How are you supposed to get a nuke when he has a mega city? With his mega city he will be able to beat you in every category.

[MorteEterna]

Just because He's Ranked Number 1 On Head to Head Dosnt mean he's the best.
And Just because You beat him dosn't make you better.

Almost all CivRev Leaders have Great Perks/Faults You Just have to understand how the game is designed to play with them.

I issue challenges to all Great players out there, and no I dont go posting videos after I win.
Only Ranked 1v1

Must be in Top 40
Xbox Live Only
Precision00
Thank you,
CivRev Master

I have played you 2 times, what civ do you use? I don't remember, however you will remember me, I use arabians, and if you want to add me it's ok

However MGT isn't so bad as you have said, only as me he hates some things, he is really good, only he was too aggressive at the beginning, now I think he isn't as some bad players in this game, he only would like to be respected as he was in civilization 4 and now for Revolution

[Hodory]

I have played you 2 times, what civ do you use? I don't remember, however you will remember me, I use arabians, and if you want to add me it's ok

However MGT isn't so bad as you have said, only as me he hates some things, he is really good, only he was too aggressive at the beginning, now I think he isn't as some bad players in this game, he only would like to be respected as he was in civilization 4 and now for Revolution

I think Civ 4 was a much better single player experience. Multi-player in Civ 4 was usually set at quick pace, and many people tried to finish it as soon as possible with typical rush tactics etc. It was virtually impossible to finish a multi-player session in Civ 4 if everyone wanted to take the game to the modern era with focus in culture or tech. As for diplomatic win? I don't think I have ever seen those.

They did well with Revolution in the pacing of the game, so that people can actually finish the multi-player game sessions now.

[Bantams]

funniest thread award goes to this one congrats!

[PrivateJohn]

Just because He's Ranked Number 1 On Head to Head Dosnt mean he's the best.
And Just because You beat him dosn't make you better.

Almost all CivRev Leaders have Great Perks/Faults You Just have to understand how the game is designed to play with them.

I issue challenges to all Great players out there, and no I dont go posting videos after I win.
Only Ranked 1v1

Must be in Top 40
Xbox Live Only
Precision00
Thank you,
CivRev Master

Reason why this video is upload in the first place is because it has been "known" long enough that megacity is unbeatable and statistically speaking chances of winning when using Rome megacity is very very high. With a video to back me up, I have nothing to fear and able to counter "lies" & "accusation" by another party.

Thus i issue a challenge to MGT and it seems to prove otherwise.
4 games i play with MGT, i won 2 and he won 1. Last game it froze at 1100 AD while his "megacity" population is 15 only while technology wise we are both very competitive with me leading abit,

Difference being that I already have an army of cruiser and tank research is just few turns away. If he doesn't get the tank artifact, the game would have end because i already capture few of his city with minimum catapults & pikement but then he manage to use 1 free tank to recapture it. Even with the advantage of all the artifact (atlantis too!) while i got none, luck favors him ALOT but he is still not leading in that game. I am not calling it a win though because its not final, & I still have the video of that game.

I am not here to preach I am so awesome, I am here to speak out to people that the game is not 100% balance (heck how many Civ were there? 14?) but it's definitely not 100% imbalance.

Look at Morte games vs MGT then look at me vs Morte. See the pattern? Statistically speaking i lose to Morte more but when I am against MGT it's the opposite. The score of Morte vs MGT is 1:1, is it? Where is the "higher winning ratio" MGT spoke of?

This is enough to prove that certain Civ/strategy counter certain Civ/strategy and always expect the unexpected. This is why we need to play more, expose ourselves like after few games of playing MGT, he "Improve" his strategy by rushing people now, defense are up etc etc but the speed of his megacity growth drop.

[MorteEterna]

I've tried a strategy for Rome today but I have to improve that, However In the year 1500 AD I had about 15 cities or more, 1 army of modern infantry in all cities (I used leonardo workshop + great leader because I didn't want to sell them and rebuild). However I had about 700 tech each turn and I had a city without factory (If I remember) That could produce about 40 hammers. I needed a little to build the Manhattan Project. However it was on deity, and combining my strategy with this strategy of Rome I have blocked all my enemies but Germans that were far than me. I have taken about 3 cities using great artists. It was on deity. However I have to improve this for a military start rush, it will be difficult maybe but I will challenge the time, to see if I can build horsemen before my enemy has too many archers, because they aren't as arabs ( ) because they have 6 instead of 9, and no great bonuses as ninja. At the moment I still think arabs are the best because I don't see what I can do in 2 hours, but how many games I can do in 2 hours

However MGT in the last game (when I lost), without seeing that I wasn't playing very good, I tried some suicide to his cities, has done some good things with his legion armies. They are good if you are attacked and you can't defend maybe because horsemen cost 60 and are good to rush your enemy, legions cost 30 and I think they are good to attack while you defend. So I think MGT has a good strategy, but a counter was attacking him fast

[PrivateJohn]

Playing aggresive is not as easy as it sounds, i've try it myself...just one small mistake and it could jeapordize your whole game while playing tech,econ or culture...even with mistake, sometimes you are still able to fix it.

[MorteEterna]

Playing aggresive is not as easy as it sounds, i've try it myself...just one small mistake and it could jeapordize your whole game while playing tech,econ or culture...even with mistake, sometimes you are still able to fix it.

Fix it using which civ? If I use arabians I have techs, gold, culture and units from the ancient era (after about 20 turns I have techs maybe as my enemy, and continuing I will have more)

[PrivateJohn]

I am not sure how to explain it. For example playing aggresively, when you are attacking and you end up losing 2 or 3 of your army and fail at taking their city. Isn't that a big blow to rusher?

For a tech,econ or culture player. Made a few bad decision etc...sometimes you still able to catch up depend on the situation.