AU 601: sabrewolf's DAR 2 (rome)

[sabrewolf]

Please do NOT read this thread of you are playing the game and:

1) You are Andydog
OR
2) You are playing as the Greeks
OR
3) You have not yet explored the entire map (including oceans and islands).
OR
4) You have not yet discovered gunpowder.


this is the thread of my 2nd DAR for my AU601 game against andydog.

we are the playing the AU mod at monarch level.

i'll add the link to andydog's DAR thread and first screenies soon...


link to my DAR1

[sabrewolf]

the DAR 1 ended in the year 390 AD shortly after the discovery of gunpowder.

i have attached the scores from 380ad.

[sabrewolf]

i'm at war against greece ever since around 1800bc (?) and he's been off and on in war against various AI neighbors (me bribing them into war, him bribing them out of war).

he has managed to keep up in tech with the AI, but REXing and military buildup hasn't been happening. so while i was at nearly 30 cities, he had around 12. and while i was leader-farming (and got 4 of them... 3 for armies and 1 for the pentagon-rushing), he was obviously not fending off the suicide missions very well (egyptian war chariots come in masses and are easy to pick off).

a few hundred years ago, i surprise attacked his persian-border city of knossos (3 defenders) with 2 armies. after a short consolidation phase and filling of these armies (now all with 4x ancient cavalry), i continue my pursuit of his cities and picked them off one by one.

2nd city to fall was sparta (1 hoplite), his gems city, which had to be abandonned. then came corinth (3 units), then herakleia (4 hoplites) and a turn later thessalonika (2 hoplites).

so he has lost 5 cities, about 20 miltary units, 4 non-combat units... being in republic, his war wariness is probably hurting him right now and will be killing him, once he buys babylon out of war (which he has to do, because they are sending in medinfs)

[sabrewolf]

engineering still hasn't appeared, but education has spread. persia had it already for quite some time, now egypt got it and the germanics too thanks to their great library (which now has expired with the minimum of possible recieved techs )

unfortunatly, no civ except persia were willing to pay a decent gpt for a tech, so i decided to sell engineering to persia for nearly all their money (~355g) and 53gpt!!!

after that, i got education from egypt for engineering and 8gpt.

the only thing that would annoy me would be if persia cancelled the deal quite soon.

however, i wouldn't mind, if andy made peace with greece. currently, i'm giving cleo iron and 15gpt total. not that it matters too much, but i would prefer to use the money for other things...

[sabrewolf]

finally, i've planted the fur city deep in germanic/celtic territory!

im 3 turns, my fur contract with the celts will run out and then i'll have the 2 other luxuries available for trading around (hopefully gaining more gpt).

[sabrewolf]

here the trade window with the persian. i forgot to take a screenshot earlier on and i don't feel like replaying the turn to display it... but trust me: i got an additional >350g for education!

leonardo's workshop will be completed next turn and then i'll mass upgrade all units that need upgrading (i don't like going legionary-->medinf, because 3 defence is quite neat too)

so far, i've also got about 6 horsemen waiting for either chivalry or - at this pace - military tradition.


meanwhile, in greece, i've moved one nearly-fully recovered army (the 11/18HP (now 17/18HP) one that took herakleia) towards the next city in the jungle next to pharsalos (see the 380ad screenshot). i doubt andy will put too many defeces in that city because the other army can engage athens twice and he won't want to lose athens (yet).

[sabrewolf]

to be honest - i wish andy would give up. even if he does manage to kill my armies, victory will eventually be mine - he can only delay it.

i currently just feel like a sadist, picking him off city by city, making his nation absolutely war-weary, etc.
and it may still be fun for me - it surely isn't for him. and this is slowly turning into public humiliation...


what would you guys do in his position?

[nbarclay]

I'd send him a message saying something like, "It seems clear from the current economic and military situation that Rome is ultimately going to win. If you are having fun seeing how long you can hang on, we can keep playing, but if not, you are welcome to call it quits. Whichever you would rather do is fine with me."

So far as "public humiliation" is concerned, I don't see how playing the game out ought to be considered any more humiliating than giving up. In real life, continuing a losing fight so that people die needlessly is despicable. But in Civ, depending on a player's attitude, there is honor to be had in putting up the best fight you can in what is ultimately a losing situation.

[sabrewolf]

ok, wrong choice of words. "humiliating" (i just looked it up) is a bit too strong... i had grabbed it from when you resign in civ3

i know there's nothing bad about playing it out until the end. one could call it "never surrender, die in honour". on the other hand, it's just as noble to give up when you notice that the fight is indisputably decided. there's no shame in losing, only in "bad losing".

thanks for the great formulation, nathan. i've sent him exactly that message, but i doubt he'll resign... he didn't do so either in the 1on1s we had.


i'm not really sure, what i prefer. having this "over with", so i could focus on a clean SP game, would be nice.
but for every of his cities i capture, i can gift it to the AI and recapture it later on, without interfering with the au601-idea. if he should resign, there's suddenly going to be a lot of open space for babylon and egypt to settle.

i think in such a case, i may "bend" the rules and say that i'm allowed to capture any city, that i founded within the former greek territory. then i don't need to send over 15 units, just to block the hills against invasion. is this acceptable?

[sabrewolf]

aaaanyhow.....

leonardo da vinci has opened up his workshop in rome!

first unit (spear-->musket) was upgraded this turn!

[sabrewolf]

two more cities have phallen!

this time, the persians managed to capture one town! it is the phirst time that the AI was successphul in taking a city! i'm surprised! the isthmus phor reinphorcements has been blocked phor about 12 turns and bephore that, only horsemen and archers passed through. andy must really be concentrating his phorces in athens or completely crumbling after losing all resources and connections to all other cities

notice the 'ph's? yeees, you guessed right. pharsalos has been captured and in honour of the brave roman men for now all 'eph's have been replaced 'pee-ache's

[sabrewolf]

next to fall, is delphi, (3x NW of athens) and thermophylae (3x N of pharsalos). after that, army 1 will capture the last -well fortified hilled, walled cities, while army 2 will take out athens unit by unit while always retreating back to the mountains for safety (maybe not even needed, if HP loss is minor).

i reckon the nightmare will be over in around 10 turns, 15 tops, if i'm unlucky with the RNG or if andy has a surprise ready.

meanwhile, i'm gifting cities to the germanics and celts. these will be competely unproductive and unconnected for centuries... and they may even trigger and inter-AI war

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
ok, wrong choice of words. "humiliating" (i just looked it up) is a bit too strong... i had grabbed it from when you resign in civ3

It always struck me as an attempt to be funny. This is because it is not likely to be a truely humiliating situation.

[sabrewolf]

it was a close battle against a fortified veteran hoplite behind walls and then against a fortified regular medinf behind the same walls... but it worked ... with 4HPs left (started with about 16), thermopylae has been captured! btw: this is a great city as it has walls, barracks, iron and access to the sea... so i'll keep it

[sabrewolf]

a powerful programming language, the first 6 lettres of my former best swimming stroke (in switzerland we call it "delphin", meaning "dolphin"... the swimstroke is what english speakers (and germany too, btw) call "butterfly"), and the last greek city i'll capture...

for andy has accepted my offer (the nicely formulated one --> thanks nathan! ) and will give up.

[sabrewolf]

thanks to the capturing of delphi, i've actually recieved the spices-source i was keeping herakleia for! because it's got a harbour, i immediately recieve it a now have 7 luxury resources!

and as you can see, i would be able to get the 8th resource from the germanics (for engineering), but i think i'll pass on that for now and take it when i've got hospitals and marketplaces everywhere


persia has btw researched astronomy and now definetly needs "trimming". fortunatly, my armies are now to full disposal for such a manouvre and with musketmen defending the isthmi (what's the correct plural here? isthmii? isthmos'? isthmusses? ). i'll need to rush 3 of them near knossos, build fortresses and lots of cannons

[sabrewolf]

ok, now i'm angry!

andy nobly decided to resign 2 turns ago, agreeing to let me march into his capital.

i moved my army to a fairly unprotected (just forest) area to be able to march into his capital next turn.

but what does this "player" do? he throws all his units against my army, killing it
and then he comes up a miserable excuse that he "tried the best to resign"... sure!

that's what i call a very bad loser!

and all he tells me is to "chill out". i wouldn't even get this uptight if he were an player who sticks to his word and STOPs playing when resigning


if he has a bit of honour, he'll replay that turn

[sabrewolf]

oh well, *sigh*, it doesn't look like...

pity, now athens has been taken by an AI instead. next time (if there should be a next time) i won't ask for a resignation, but i'll go all the way to the bitter end. then at least i wouldn't need to get uptight about such stuff...

anyway. a turn earlier, i urgently needed cash, because i thought andy would send his swordsman to take back delphi, so i sold iron for some gpt and 115g to persia. that let me hurry a (reg) medinf.

it turned out to be unneccessary, because a AI marched into athens between the turns. oh well...

[sabrewolf]

this (screenshot) is what the map looked like before that happened and the turn changed into a single-player PBEM.

babylon unfortunatly placed a city (samarra, on the right side) near to where i had intended one (grabbing all spices between the two cities). 3 of my settlers are on the way by boat on the inner ocean and the first would have been in place within 3 turns. i guess i'll now have to divert them (grabbing the gem source, possibly the iron and/or saltpeter on the outer side of the doughnut land.


now that i'm the only player, i'm faced with several possibilities:
- peaceful (go for diplo/spaceship victory) in democracy
- domination (like nathan did it, but i'm on a lower difficulty level) by culture-rushing and getting AIs to fight each other in monarchy and later communism
- warmongering and pillaging (get out armies ASAP, cripple every single nation every 50 turns or so (like the "shadows" in babylon 5) and win by spaceship.

i could also change the rules that i could go for conquest now...
what rule-changes i'm sure about (except if someone convinces my of the oposite) is that i'm going to be allowed to grab any city between the persian-greek isthmus and the (now)-egyptian hills range, so basicly letting me claim the greek lands. 2/3rds of the area will be mine anyway, because they are non-AI-founded cities, so the rule changes only really affect cases like samarra or coastal cities.
any vetos against this rulechange?

[Andydog]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
but what does this "player" do? he throws all his units against my army, killing it
and then he comes up a miserable excuse that he "tried the best to resign"... sure!

that's what i call a very bad loser!

and all he tells me is to "chill out". i wouldn't even get this uptight if he were an player who sticks to his word and STOPs playing when resigning


if he has a bit of honour, he'll replay that turn

I've just arrived home from work to a heads up PM about this post. I haven't looked at this DAR before now as the game only finished late last night, and I've been busy since then.

In my defence I did think that the game was over and that was it, I wasn’t aware that sabrewolf wanted to carry on the game in single player, he hadn't told me. The killing of his army was in a way meant to be a kind of joke, a leader who got a pinch of revenge for the savage slaughtering of his peace keepers as he faced his imminent death. I didn’t think it would make any difference - the scores wouldn’t change, the power graph wouldn’t change. If I’d known that sabrewolf wanted to continue, I’d have played out the turns so that the game could continue its natural course, him and the AI taking my cities and suffering the associated losses.

I don’t particularly feel like doing that now though.

[sabrewolf]

ok, then that chapter is over. i'm still not happy, but what can i do...

now as soon as my c3c works again, i'll continue with the SP-game...

[vmxa1]

It seems to me that once you have only one human player left in the game, you can play by any rules that you wish.

[sabrewolf]

andy decided to replay that turn without killing my army.

for that, i thank him and hope that in future we don't have any more of such miscommunication and misunderstandings!

[sabrewolf]

this move changed a lot for my second attempt at this turn.

for one, i got some gold from the athens vaults. next, i didn't have to rush the medinf in delphi, which meant i could do a different deal with persia.

as 3 civs had printing press, i bought it from egypt fairly cheap: for iron and i got all their gold (48)

with that, i renegotiated peace with persia, gave them a RoP (but i'm still blocking all access to my lands), invention (unfortuntly) and some luxuries and got 2gpt in return.

now i'm up gunpowder, chemistry (in 2 turns) and behind in whatever they are researching.

at break-even pace, i can get techs (like banking and navigation) at 6 turns per tech... (once the AI start paying me in gpt, i'll switch to tech broker). so military tradition will take me about 15 turns... i'll make 20 out of it, because of my peace treaty with persia, then the "pillage and burn persia" will start.

what's more worrying: egypt has declared war on the germanics... just after i gave them iron. i guess i'll support the germanics with iron too (they've got wines) to make the war less unfair (and not make egypt a kAI)

[sabrewolf]

interesting thing just happened: persia declared war on me for no reason real obvious reason!

a single horseman attacked my fortified, barricaded musketman, retreated and that was the only thing persia did that turn. a medinf of mine killed a persian archer near athens and my armies (so far provisorically defending conquered cities) departed towards persia to pillage... earlier than expected.

the only bad thing of this war declaration is the 53gpt-deal i lost. and being at only 20g before the turn, a harbour was lost... fortunatly not in an important productive city...

i got egypt (who's now at peace with germany) and babylon into the war too, even if it's just to make them not attack me... and thereby making me lose herakleia's spices.

[alexman]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
interesting thing just happened: persia declared war on me for no [...] obvious reason!

[snip]

the only bad thing of this war declaration is the 53gpt-deal i lost.

You've solved your own mystery: the AI often declares war against a lender when it can no longer afford to pay him gpt.

[sabrewolf]

but a turn earlier they were willing to pay 22gpt for gunpowder?

and the deal had been going for about 15 turns until then...

[alexman]

I obviously don't know the whole story, but lots can happen in one turn. Perhaps a gpt deal that they were receiving from someone else expired.

[sabrewolf]

by the way, i've noticed an SP-PBEM exploit:

if you CONTINUE a game instead of saving and loading, you seem to get additional moves.

eg. 2 workers irrigating:
- in SP, it's finished in 2 turn. basta...
- in >=2 player PBEM, they'll finish it at the end of the 1st turn, but during the 2nd turn, they cannot be moved, hence: 2 turns net
- when 1 player MP, they'll also finish at the end of the 1st turn, but you can move them in the next turn!

next example: wounded units in cities:
- in SP and MP: move units in a city, 2nd turn: don't move them, 3rd move: they're healthy(er) again
- in 1p-MP: move units in to city, 2nd turn: healthy AND moveable.

due to speed reasons, i prefer continuing (with exceptional safety saves every 10 turns or so), so am i illegally exploiting the game? nathan, what did you do after you got theseus' password?

[sabrewolf]

i failed to screenshoot the 500ad scores and the last save before that was 440ad.

so here is the scorebox and minimap of 520ad