Help me test a better Chasqui Scout!

[Dominae]

Since we're not going to do an official AU course, I thought it might still be fun to do a comparative game, and get the ball rolling on discussions for AU mod stuff.

Here's a little scenario that I set up for myself:

Civ: Incans
Map: 3 billion years old, standard everything else
Difficulty: Any from Regent to Sid
Modifications: 1. Chasqui Scout 0/0/1 ATAR, 20 Shields, 2. Scout upgrades to Chasqui Scout

I've included a screenshot of the starting location below.

The idea behind the "new" Chasqui is simply to improve it by making it a "super Scout", rather than a "really bad Jaguar Warrior". For those of you puzzling over 'ATAR', it simply means that this version of the Chasqui treats all terrain as Roads. Thus, although it only has one movement point, it can actually travel three tiles every turn (it's basically half an Explorer). The reason to make Scouts upgrade to Chasqui Scouts is to ensure that the Incans start with this new UU right from the start, providing them with some truly awesome exploration capabilities.

The goals of this "test" are twofold:

1. Test out this new and improved Chasqui Scout. Is it too powerful to have at turn 1? Is the 20-Shield cost too high? What kinds of crazy things can you do in the Ancient era with an Explorer-type unit?

This will provide valuable feedback for use in AU mod discussions.

2. Test out the power of the Agricultural trait. The map is one I would refer to as "Good" for Agr. civs. Try to play out the game long enough to determine whether or not Agricultural is really overpowering on such maps (of course, you can play through to completion if you want!). Remember that Agr. still get major benefits in the mid-game once they change governments.

For those of you of a mind to try this out: have fun (that is, try not to think of the gpt and Corruption bugs!).


Dominae

[Dominae]

4000BC:

[Rhothaerill]

I should be able to work on this one...especially since there is no AU course. At least the start isn't as good as my first straight-out-of-the-box game with the agriculture trait. Three rivers and several wheat in the vicinity. Didn't know about the free tech from philosophy so researched the Wheel first. Received an SGL so I quickly researched masonry and built the Pyramids. With three rivers I had my first 11 cities all getting the agriculture bonus and having a granary in each. Can you say game over at 2500bc?

[vmxa1]

Rhothaerill, man SGL so soon, can I go to Vegas with you?

Dom, I was wondering why you would test traits and units on any other level than Regent? This is the one place that no one has any bonus or extra units, so you do not have those factors impacting the out come?

The new scout will be impacted at say Sid where they have 18 extra starting troops and 2 settlers and 4 workers. The bonus for the AI and these units will make it cover the land so much faster that the scout is in effect down graded.

[Dominae]

vmxa1, the game is set up with the Incans as the human player. Therefore it's a test to see whether the modified Chasqui is a good unit in the human player's hands, whatever his or her skill level.

It's a well-known fact that he AI does not use the Expansionist trait very well because it never builds more than one Scout. However, I'm happy to report that the AI uses a 0/0/1 ATAR unit very well (much better than 1/1/2 for 20 Shields, which it uses to escort Settlers and defend cities), despite the fact that it still never builds more than one. Even on Sid level, it uses the modified Chasqui to scout further/faster than it normally does. I've verified this already in Debug mode, since it's sort of hard to see in a normal game.


Dominae

[vmxa1]

I knew you would have a reason, just wanted to find out what it was.

[Rhothaerill]

I've played through to 1675bc (emperor level) so far and my preliminary views of the "improved" Chasqui scout are that it is VERY powerful and 20 shields would be about right. I built exactly one more besides my starting one and in very short order uncovered most of the continent. The ability to treat all terrain as roads is extremely powerful...especially when you have a map with as many hills and mountains as this one does. The ability to move through three mountains in one turn with all it's attendant viewing capabilities is nothing to sneeze at. With it I had early contact with all my neighbors and was able to set up some favorable tech deals that catapulted me fairly far into the tech lead.

Regarding the agricultural trait so far, the start wasn't quite as good as my first Conquests game, but this is still an excellent start with all the fresh water. The extra food when settling on fresh water is not only good for faster growth and REXing, it's good for more production early on since you can use extra forests or the like much earlier while still maintaining good growth.

Oh, and I'm having fun.

[Taian]

Looks like fun. Tried to download it, but the zip folder is empty...

[Rhothaerill]

Try again. It worked fine for me.

[ducki]

I'm up to 1600bc and I think the new Chaqsui is extremely powerful.

I do have some misgivings about trying to analyze the power of Agriculture with an Expansionist civ - both traits are very much geared to REX and the early advantage. I have 1 fewer towns than everyone else on my continent, and mostly got maps from huts, but I have a hard time seeing how I could lose. And I've only been able to trade tech twice for first rank techs - I've been in the lead ever since, which rarely happens at Monarch.


Love the new scout, have misgivings about analyzing Agriculture's early game advantage when paired with another early game trait. I used Scientific for my tests, as that's not much of a REX-vantage.

Nice scenario, Dom. Good mod to the UU, IMO, but with ATAR, maybe it should take more than 7 turns to build one - I think the cost is a little low.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Taian
Looks like fun. Tried to download it, but the zip folder is empty...

That is an artifact from XP. I have run into it before and I get it on this as well.
I forot how to DL it with out a problem. maybe some one will remind me.

[nbarclay]

I played this game on Emperor using the standard version of the Chasqui Scout instead of Dominae's modifed version. (Dominae, thanks again for setting up the standard version.) I had a very nice REX thanks to a free settler my scout found very early just a few tiles away from Cattle Lake. That let me found Machu Picchu, my great two-turn worker pump (once its granary was completed), in 3500 BC. With a rapid REX assured, I had no real fear going after Code of Laws before Philosophy, allowing me to begin my transition to Republic in 1425 BC. The screenshot shows my civ at the time.

I was so busy REXing that I only ever built one Chasqui Scout. Both he and my regular scout focused their explorations toward the north, so I didn't find out much about what was east and west of me until very late. After some exploration, my Chasqui came back home to serve as anti-barbarian defense and culture flip protection. He even knocked out a barbarian camp and got promoted along the way. (So in essence, he functioned first as a scout and then as a fast warrior with retreat ability.)

[nbarclay]

In 775 BC, as my REXing was winding down, the Mongols bopped one of my settlers. As I often do, I was playing with almost no military, and a rush-built spearman was unable to defend my northernmost city against the Mongol archers' advance. The losses meant little in material terms - it was very late in the game before corruption was anything less than devastating that far north - but having to divert to a war footing was annoying.

In 710 BC, a lucky Mongol archer defending a hill killed two attacking horsemen, being reduced to one hit point in the process. My Chasqui Scout struck and the golden age of the Incas began.

Note that I'm trying to culturally crowd the Chinese city of Nanking and the Dutch cities of The Hague and Groningen. At this point, my effort to crowd Nanking isn't going very well; China built a temple there earlier than I'd hoped they would.

[Arrian]

Looks like GS's military once upon a time.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

The rate at which I could build horsemen or swordsmen during my golden age would have supported military conquest on a large scale if I had been interested in pursuing that objective. But with the Forbidden Palace heavily crippled, that did not seem particularly profitable. Instead, I made peace with the Mongols as quickly as possible and went back into builder and research mode.

As I often do on Continents maps, I beelined to Navigation with a goal of opening foreign luxury trade as early as possible. When I got to the other continent around the mid 300's AD, I found out that the Celts had taken a big bite out of India and had almost finished chewing up Porgugal. (The Celts left Portugal with a single city, the fur city in the far northwest of the continent, but the Greeks finished them off later.)

Over time, the tide turned in my cultural campaign. Borders around Nanking shifted in my favor, and by the end of the medieval era, I had more than twice the culture of either the Chinese or the Dutch. During the course of the era, both Nanking and the Dutch city of Groningen flipped to me. Groningen proved especially handy since it proved to be my only "native" source of saltpeter. The only medieval wonder I allowed an AI to get was Magellan's, which was claimed by China.

I entered the industrial era in 610 AD. At the time, I was six techs ahead of my closest competitor, but I'd been in too much of a builder mode to have the mounted troops needed for a cavalry blitz. My plan was to research Steam Power and possibly another industrial tech and then go back for Military Tradition.

And yes, if you can read it, I'm actually building knights. I traded for Chivalry in order to build the Knights Templar, not because it was worth building for its own sake (with only two Crusaders by the time it became obsolete for me, it most certainly was not), but just because I was collecting wonders.

By the way, I dealt with the GPT bug by keeping rough track of how much gold I was getting that I wasn't supposed to and not spending that gold. There may have been a few times during the course of the game where I went a little below what should have been zero, but I tried to keep finances essentially honest.

[nbarclay]

When I finished researching Steam Power, I got a nasty surprise. There were only two sources of coal on the continent, one in Dutch territory and one in Mongol territory. I started making plans to invade the Dutch, but the Mongols had other ideas. Hoardes of ancient cavalry from their Statue of Zeus invaded my north just as I was in the process of paying for cavalry upgrades. Fortunately, an incursion by obsolete archers gave me a little advance warning and I had sufficient troops in position to blunt the attack.

Once the Mongol offensive was dealt with, it was my cavalry commander's turn. Mongol cities started falling, one after another, and I even had a ship handy to take out the island the Mongols held off their coast. By the end of 880 AD, Mongols existed only as an ethnic group in the northern part of the Inca nation and as part of the Inca worker corps. During the course of the war, I got a leader to build a cavalry army and found out how much fun those things are to play with.

When the Mongols were defeated, the grace period the Dutch had unknowingly received ended. In just two or three turns, they were expelled from the continent, but the Incas had little interest in islands. So for the rest of the game, the Dutch took their Seafaring trait perhaps a bit more seriously than they had intended to.

As I was planning to attack China (still no AI Nationalism yet), the Celts launched one of the absurd AI two-unit invasions. If I hadn't had cavalry in the area, the invasion might have had an ounce of sanity to it - the area where the units landed was undefended. But cavalry sweped in and dealt with the attackers, and I decided not to let the Celtic nuisance get in the way of my campaign against China. The Chinese put up the best fight they could, even barely breaking the first assault on their capital, but it wasn't nearly good enough. The Chinese, like the Dutch, were permitted to survive as an island people (in thier case on a single largish island). In 1000 AD, the continent was mine.

The war with the Celts did have one marginally negative outcome: the Celts brought the Greeks in in an alliance, and when a Greek galley appeared off the coast of the island conquered from the Mongols, I decided to give it to the Dutch rather than try to defend it. The place was more of a nuisance than it was worth.

[nbarclay]

The Inca people spent the rest of the industrial era researching and building. Unfortunatley, after the "war" with the Celts, luxuries were less readily available than they had been, so my Incas had more happiness problems than I really prefer. Eventually, I got tired of the total lack of incense on the market (three civs with one each) and came up with a plan. I declared war on India and landed a cavalry army (newly enhanced with a fourth unit) and an infantry outside Jaipur. To give India something else to worry about and to deal with the risk of culture flips, I invited the Celts into an alliance. So instead of attacking my landing force, India focused on their Celtic enemies, and I was able to capture Jaipur easily. I tried for a second city, but it had one defender too many so the Celts ended up with it (along with the rest of what was left of India). As my sole beachhead and an important luxury source, Jaipur quickly became the most heavily defended city on the planet. The Celts went on to conquer Greece, so they held all of their continent except for my single city.

My Incas entered the modern era around 1360 AD with a lead of six techs. (I had seven that the Celts didn't, but they had a Fascism and I saw no reason to obtain it from them.) I'd gotten a science great leader around the middle of the industrial era and saved him to boost my science output beginning with my research on Radio as my last industrial tech, so I was able to research relatively quickly in the early modern era considering the corruption problems in C3C.

I actually had two back-to-back ages of scientific discovery thanks to a second science great leader in the early modern era. I had plans to take out the Celts with modern armor, but with how enormous my tech lead was, I decided to go after Robotics first so I could support my modern armor with radar artillery. Over time, the Celts became less and less able to come up with gold per turn to help finance my research, so I ended up suspending military production and putting my fully developed cities on wealth for a while.

Just after I went back to start researching Ecology (if I recall correctly), the Celts got tired of seeing an Inca city on their continent and decided to do something about it. They declared war, hurling cavalry after cavalry at my artillery-supported infantry and following up with some footsoldiers of various types. Fortunately, they didn't concentrate their forces in a single wave, so my tanks were able to deal with one wave of attackers, withdraw to heal as best they could in a city under air and naval bombardment, and then emerge again to deal with the second major attack wave. (I did end up losing about fourteen workers in the initial assault, whiich was irritating but not especially painful since they'd already finished building the railroads I really needed in the area.)

I didn't think to get any shots of the actual combat, but the shot below shows Jaipur and its surrounding area at the dawn of the industrial era.

[nbarclay]

If the war had gone according to my plan, it would have been absurdly easy. I had intended to transport additional forces to the other continent by sea, upgrade the forces already there, and stomp. I even had at l;east half a dozen armies from my military academy waiting for modern armor to populate them.

But being attacked early made a complete mess of my plans. Unescorted transports are fine for delivering troops in peacetime, but they're a deathtrap in war and all I had to escort transports was other transports. I wasn't supposed to need a real navy! Further, because I had expected to be able to preposition sufficient troops, I didn't have things set up to deliver reinforcements by air.

On the plus side, the Celts still hadn't researched Mass Production or Radio yet, so the best they could attack me with was cavalry and infantry. I upgraded a few infantry to MechInfs, rode out the attack, and then went on the offensive. Since the Celts had only recently captured the cities they held around Jaipur, cultural borders weren't much of an issue in the initial battles.

I sent in two transport loads of reinforcements escorted by four empty transports. The ships arrived more or less in one piece (with the emphesis on "less") after surviving a horrible pounding by the Celtic air force, but when I looked at the units in Jaipur a little later with an eye toward sending them back for another load, they weren't there. Looking at the editor, it looks like bombers have lethal bombardment in C3C, something I hadn't realized before. Since I wasn't aware of the feature at the time, I'm not sure what else the zillions of Celtic bombers might have managed to kill, but I think I'll keep a stronger eye toward my air defenses in the future.

Eventually, I was able to get my offensive into a mode somewhat resembling what I'd planned. Tanks took a handful of cities, and then I started upgrading to modern armor and loading my armies with them. A leader rushed an airport, cities at home built airports, and reinforcements started arriving by air. The artillery corps was gradually upgraded to radar artillery. By the end of the war, I had ten modern armor armies to go along with my three old cavalry armies (all with four units each). Supported by radar artillery that could soften up all but the most distant targets, and facing an opponent with nothing better than infantry and no radar towers to assist in those infantry's defense, the war turned into about the most lopsided massacre I've ever engaged in by the time it was over. (The only catch is, with armies doing almost all my attacking, leaders were hard to come by.)

I also had one other interesting experience: for the first time ever, I actually ran up against the limit on how many armies an empire could have at a time. Until I conquered more cities, the game decided that fourteen was enough. (At the end of the war, I had two empty armies at home since I didn't have a practical way to ship them to the front.)

I won the game by domination in 1600 AD with the Celts reduced to three cities on their continent and one on a two-tile island. Playing out the turn after I officially won, all the Celts had left was their island; I controlled all the land on both continents. Crossing a mountian and still having a move left for my armies to attack with was a nice way to cap off my exercise in the use of cavalry and MA armies.

Nathan

[Dominae]

Looks like a strong game, Nathan. How are you dealing with Corruption?

Originally posted by nbarclay
I played this game on Emperor using the standard version of the Chasqui Scout instead of Dominae's modifed version. (Dominae, thanks again for setting up the standard version.)

Now you have to return the favor and create the 5CC scenario!




Dominae

[nbarclay]

I decided against trying to build a Forbidden Palace because I was afriad that the damage to my original, well-developed core would outweigh the benefits for cities closer to the FP. So I managed my civ pretty much how I would manage one core in a dual-core empire.

With courthouses and police stations, everything on the home continent was able to do better than "totally corrupt," albeit not necessarily by much. Configured to use tiles instead of specialists, my most distant Mongol city could keep three of its sixteen shields and (with a library and, courtesy of the Internet, a research lab) generate ten beakers. But in cities that far out, I can do better irrigating and using large numbers of specialists.

One of the really neat things about C3C is that civil engineers can do mostl of the work building courthouses and police stations in outlying areas. Without gold to spare for rush building, getting courthouses and police stations in even the nearest Mongol cities would have been pretty much hopeless in previous versions of Civ. But with civil engineers to help, the strategy of irrigating extensively and using lots of civil engineers allows outlying cities to build!

Nathan

[OPD]

Originally posted by nbarclay
allowing me to begin my transition to Republic in 1425 BC. The screenshot shows my civ at the time.

Did you find the double unit cost hit you badly when switching to Rep so early, especially if you'd been getting 2 turn workers since 3500bc?

I've been getting Rep as a free tech consistently on Monarch but then putting off the switch untill I have a couple of cities over 6. The 2 times I've made the switch that early has put me back to long research times and having to adjust the slider almost every turn

[nbarclay]

Keep in mind that building the granary took a while, so I didn't start getting two-turn workers right away. The reason I can generally do well with ultra-early transitions to Republic is that I normally run a very lean military in the early game. In this case, I had twenty-two units at the time I started the switch: sixteen workers, a settler, four warriors, and a Chasqui Scout. That means I don't give up either a lot of MPs or a huge amount of gold in support costs. Wtih a larger military, the dynamics would have been rather different.

I haven't ever thought to write down my gold, food, and shield output before and after the switch, so my belief that it was worthwhile is more a matter of gut feeling than of hard data. But there is more involved than just an extra gold per tile versus maintenance costs and the inability to use MPs. Republic means less waste and corruption in more distant cities, and it means more food from food bonus tiles (including the plains cattle tile to the northeast, the wine by the capital, and all those flood plains to the north; the cattle tile by my worker pump doesn't count at the moment because the difference between five and six food per turn is meaningless).

For an agricultural civ, the stakes for changing out of Republic tend to be even higher because for every city that is not on a river, the city tile itself is a food bonus tile waiting to be exploited under a non-despotic government. Since I built so many cities on rivers in this game, I only had one non-river city going into anarchy and two when I got out (I was just a couple turns away from founding another city). But I was out of fresh-water city sites, so every additional city I founded grew faster under Republic than it would have under Despotism.

Nathan

[Jaguar]

This was one of the first things I tried when I got Conquests. I think it's a well-balanced change.

[zorbop]

Ok, a bit off topic, but when I download this what folder do I have to put it in and what ending to I have to give it?

[Dominae]

If you're downloading the original zip file, save it to anywhere you want, but unpack the files to your "Saves" folder in your Conquets directory.

If you're downloading the file I provided for Nathan, just save it to your Saves folder.

There's no need to add any extensions, but if for some reason they get cut off, they're .sav files.


Dominae

[zorbop]

thanks. not having winzip would be my problem then. i will go download that right away...

Btw, i finally firgured out where your avatar comes from. That magic card, Braids, Cabal minion.