Blood and Empire

[Theben]

We haven't had a good story of a game (with pictures!) for a while now, so I figure it's time. This is, without a doubt, the most interesting SP game of Civ4 I've ever played AND I have lots of saves so hopefully I can tell the full story. There are some areas with large breaks between saves, so my plan is to re-play some turns to fill in the gaps. If you see something that looks at odds with something else you saw earlier, that's why. Anyway, the settings are:

BtS 3.17
Large
Fractal
Medium sea
Ancient
Epic

Raging Barbs
Aggressive AI
Random Personalities
Choose Religions

And 1 or 2 extra civs. I forget. I'll check later.



You may notice the horse. It's 3800 BC and I stepped on a hut which gave me Animal Husbandry, and with pigs in my BFC that helped a lot. No there's no 4000BC save, so deal with it. And yes I'm playing the Native Americans again. For those who think I play them too much, you'll be pleased I've switched to the Sumerians recently.

Also if someone reminds me how to upload a file I'll send the 3800 BC save. I'm too lazy to figure it out again.

[Theben]

Ran into the 1st of many annoying people. William played a major role in shaping this game.

[Theben]

A few more unpleasant people:









I noticed I was surrounded by hostiles. Time to ramp up the war machine and clear out some space.

[Theben]

The main problem for the Natives is their blessing: they can quickly raise an army of 'axemen' but they tend to be weak- which means they need a close target and superior numbers, usually 3-1 or better. Most importantly, the target should NOT have the slavery civic, or else 90% of the time you'll fail. As I gathered my forces to take on William, he discovered Slavery. By the time my forces were ready (and after the occasional barbarian incursion), only Ghenghis was available. So off we went. The initial outlook wasn't good, he already had 3 cities.



A quick check saw only 1 archer in each of the 2 closest cities! Things were looking up. Maybe we couldn't finish him off, but we could take most of his empire.

[Theben]

Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs (oldiers) of war!

[Theben]

Having lost only 1 unit, I decided to blitz the rest of the country. Perhaps I could've kept Beshbalik, but I figured the maintenance would be too high. Anyway, I could rebuild later in a better spot. This decision definitely affected the course of future events.

[Theben]

Karakorum fell next, almost as quickly:




Since the Mongols sent an archer from Turfan, it too had but one defender. It still may not have been enough, but in the end the Mongol Empire is no more. Start to finish, the war lasted 8 turns.




Things looked good. We had expanded greatly, founded a religion, built the Great Wall, and were about to build the Oracle. Gems & gold flowed freely thru our lands, and a second, peaceful expansion seemed to be just around the corner.

However our northwestern neighbors had not been idle. In fact they had expanded to just outside our capital. With one war over, it appears a new confrontation may be brewing...



That's enough for now, I think. I'll try to update again in the next few days, assuming time and if people show interest.

[Unimatrix11]

Since all these screenies are pre-saved, it´s too late for this one, but in general, for AARs, i´d like people to occasionally have the ressource-button on (the ´?´ next to the globe-icon on the lower left), since i always have, and thus have a hard time seeing resources without. Also, on the last one, i notice that the detailed city-info is off as well - so i cant see, how many turns till the oracle is done...

But, of course, i appreciate any AAR and what i said above are merely suggestions for improvement. Thx.

EDIT: Oh, just noticed, the saves are pre-made, not the screenies, so maybe not too late, uh ?

[Blaupanzer]

1) Love this. Another good idea from Theben! Thanks.

2) Given the presence of ivory, why did you burn Beshbalik?

3) As we get later in the effort, a power graph or such wouldn't hurt once in a while.

[LDiCesare]

Looks like a nice start. Bad idea for the ai to build by the Great Wall...

[Theben]

Since all these screenies are pre-saved, it´s too late for this one, but in general, for AARs, i´d like people to occasionally have the ressource-button on (the ´?´ next to the globe-icon on the lower left), since i always have, and thus have a hard time seeing resources without. Also, on the last one, i notice that the detailed city-info is off as well - so i cant see, how many turns till the oracle is done...

Well, I was trying to unclutter the screen, but yes since they are from existing saves I can put them in later... also I never use detail city info.

2) Given the presence of ivory, why did you burn Beshbalik?

Like I said, I was concerned about maintenance costs. Also there were 2 more ivory next to that camp and I wanted to build a new city including them.

[Mace]

Couple of questions:

1) What difficulty level is this? Don't see that anywhere.

2) Your doing this war in 8 turns intrigues me. I have a difficult time doing "hasty" rush type wars like that. Did you split your force of Dog Soldiers and only send 1 or 2 after weakly-defended Beshbalik, for example?

3) Did you build your force of Dog Soldiers with no Barracks (non-promoted units)? It appears so from what I can tell...which makes sense if you want to get as many units as possible out as quickly as possible.

[Sarco]

Great fun! I have tried the NAs a few times but I get confused trying to do everything at once (totems poles! dog soldiers! archers! the pyramids! the oracle! oh no montezuma was my neighbour! etc)

[Ming]

Keep up the good work. You have a great collection of bad guys in the game so far. It was good you removed one early

[Theben]

Couple of questions:

1) What difficulty level is this? Don't see that anywhere.

2) Your doing this war in 8 turns intrigues me. I have a difficult time doing "hasty" rush type wars like that. Did you split your force of Dog Soldiers and only send 1 or 2 after weakly-defended Beshbalik, for example?

3) Did you build your force of Dog Soldiers with no Barracks (non-promoted units)? It appears so from what I can tell...which makes sense if you want to get as many units as possible out as quickly as possible.

1) Monarchy. Sorry 'bout that.

2) You have to rush like that if you want to eliminate someone early. As for Beshbalik, I only lost 1 Dog Soldier and still had 6 more (4 up north and 2 below, plus one warrior, plus the DS in the ruins). The others hadn't moved yet so I immediately moved them towards the next objective. It turns out that I could've ended the war 1 turn sooner b/c I didn't use the road when heading towards Turfan.

3) I didn't build barracks. It takes too long, even though it probably would've cost me at most 1 soldier. At Monarchy level you want to hit them before the AI builds extra archers (it starts with archery), at lower levels it's possible to rush nearby opponents much easier since they may have only warrior defenders.

Great fun! I have tried the NAs a few times but I get confused trying to do everything at once (totems poles! dog soldiers! archers! the pyramids! the oracle! oh no montezuma was my neighbour! etc)

Even though I play Natives a lot, and they're built around the archer defense, with them I research hunting and archery late. Sometimes so late I wind up trading techs for them! Dogs are more than adequate defenders against barbs and better attackers period, this allows me to beeline other needed techs. By the time I have to worry about other civs, I'll have archery.

The Natives are probably one of the best early, early rushers b/c you don't need to wait to hookup copper to all your cities, and you start with fishing and agriculture which allows for lots of early growth that will allow you to slave out Dogs like no tomorrow. What other civ will get you a developed capital, 2nd city, and 8 axemen plus city defenders by turn 70?

Keep up the good work. You have a great collection of bad guys in the game so far. It was good you removed one early

I got lucky... and it helped.