The Aondrae

[ElConejo]

Well, I have always wanted to catalog a game here at Apolyton and this will be my first for Civ4. Although I wont write it as a history or as a story, I still would like to share the experience of my game here. If this goes well I think that I would be very interested in writing literature about my next games.

A few notes about my game:

1) This is what I am calling a Linear game, which means that I will not be reloading or restarting for anything. Whatever happens happens, and I will warn you that that is may become a short lived journey if things turn for the worst.

2) I will be playing Marathon speed, so ages will be slower, and I will likely go through a few turns before anything interesting happens so the screenies may be spread.

3) I will be playing as the "Aztecs" but I have changed the name to the Aondrae' based on the name of my first city, Aondraes. Nonetheless my civ will be Spiritual and Aggressive.

4) It is on Noble difficulty, harder than what I am used to, so refer to the clause in 1.

5) There will be 15 Civilizations (including myself) on a "Terra" style map: all civs start on the same continent, with an uninhabited continent to the east or west. That means things will get tight on the first continent, and will likely lead to a race for colonies on the other.

6) Tropical climate, low sealevel, no city razing allowed.

7) Victories enabled: Domination, Conquest, Time

Please by all means, post comments questions or thoughts as they are welcome.

[ElConejo]

Well better start this thread off on the right foot, these are my screen shots of my start location. Pretty sweet start if you ask me. Some shoreside real estate, what looks like some good resources.

Aondraes is founded:


Regional resources:


First warriors of the city:


Wild-life attacks and kills my scout:


The city-state expands: B)


Barbarians attack my southern city:


Capturing it and forcing me to divert a LOT of resources toward retaking the city:


When the barbarians took Vrannan, not only did they cut off one of my largest cities, but they also cut off a much needed supply route, so you can see that my economy is already beginning to suffer from the loss. I have been building up a MASSIVE amount of warriors and archers from the other cities to attempt to retake the city. In Civ4 it takes much more to take a single city so I hope I can recapture it with the resources I have.. if not I see myself losing more ground than I can imagine.

[ElConejo]

Update on my progress:

I was able to take back the city the barbarians took, however it put me in a bad spot. Much worse, the barbarians didnt stop coming, they attacked my capital as well as Vrannon several more times before they finally silenced.



I founded Christianity and it spread to a few cities:


The French declared war on me! I couldnt believe it! After battling the barbarians I was hoping to get back to peaceful building, but no, the French sent a CRAPLOAD of troops toward Vrannan and weakened me even further... After a long time of fighting them, I actually sent a detachment of two groups of troops into France to try to make them go to peace with me. The first (shown below) got slaughtered... However, the second managed to by a hair take Lyons, France's westernmost city. The rest of my troops got slaughtered in attempts to cut off French supply lines.


In the minimap you can see the feable French city I had taken from them.. They finally made peace with me after that show of force, and there is no way I have the resources to fight them to the death. I realized I dont have copper or iron which spells badness. Luckily the Jaguar (my UU) doesnt require either. I decided to disband most of the troops garrisoned there for the greater good of the economy. If I loose Lyons by any means I wont care, as it brings little to the Kingdom at large. In this screenie I am trying to push my borders westward in an effort to get more cities, regardless of quality. However, Tuego stumbled upon a very nice Iron deposit which I will be of course using to build any Iron Age military units I can, once I have the tech to do so.


I decided against having my state religion be Christianity, regardless of the fact that I founded it. The reason being that most governments at this time are Buddist and they tend to like you more when you are the same religion, so in an effort not to get stomped by the larger powers I will rub that dude's belly. Here I am trading with Fredrick of Germany, the undisputed leader on the ladder thus far. As you can see (and I am sure you know why) I have kept very good relations with him in hopes that he does not see his own strength and my own weakness and decide to use that to tear my kingdom in two like a stick.


This is just a general screenie of the Kingdom at large. I am glad I expanded, even though it hurt my economy, I am at a better position now. For a bit there it was real sporty, I was sure that I was doomed. But after some good tech trading and making some friends I moved up the ladder a bit. Still no where near the top, but I am better off than the French!


Here is the current world situation as far as diplomacy is concerned. A few wars between the bigger names, which is concerning because Ghandi in India is going after the Arabs (I suspect due to the difference in religion) and they both want me to side with them but I have remained neutral. If it comes down to it, I'd rather side with Ghandi, at least at this juncture.


Sent a scout into Germany (I have an Open Borders agreement with them) to check out more of the 'outside world' seeing as all I have seen so far is my neck of the woods and so far it looks like I will have to dig in and build up what I have and hope for the best. I see this as being a bit of a fork in the road because I really could get lucky and keep to the top 5 or I could get really unlucky and plummet down and sit with France and Spain at the bottom... theres no way to tell yet, but I am trying desperately to energize my economy and get research online.

[Smellycowsquid]

This will be interesting, will Fred stay your friend? Or will France turn the world against you?

[ElConejo]

Originally posted by Smellycowsquid
This will be interesting, will Fred stay your friend? Or will France turn the world against you?

Indeed is shall be interesting! I cant wait to get home and find out what sort of things are about to unfold... I am glad your taking an interest, I felt as though I was going to loose this game earlier on and now it has become extremely interesting for me. I will share more screenies tonight after my gaming. Looks like it will only become more interesting!

[ElConejo]

OK so a TON of stuff has happened since my last update. Unfortunately not all of it was screenshotly documented because the program I use to take screenies decided not to load when I played a good hour or so today, so to fill in the gap you will just have to use prior knowledge or older or newer maps and visuals.

The first series of events DOES feature pictures, so that is good. I left off my last post saying that I was desperately attempting to energize my economy and get my research under my belt. Well... I didnt do that. In fact, I found that since 1) I am an 'aggressive' civ in this game (that means I get a free promotion) and 2) since the first part of my game forced me to get alot of military units quick, that I should continue on this route because I didnt want to loose the one edge I had. So with a crippling economy, I began looking for fresh meat. The answer came quickly, in the name of France.





France is featured above, weak and small. Those four cities are all that is left after I had taken Lyons. Since they were so small and so packed together, I felt that conquest of France would be the easiest picking I could get right now. Germany to my north was far too advanced and far too big to even attempt to hit, not to mention Fredrick had become a close ally. France had some good real estate down there, and a few good resources and I decided that I had to take it soon rather than wait and allow my economy to pull me under beyond repair.

This is a close up of my expected attack route to hit Rheims. I determined that Rheims would be 'the city that must hold' because it had France's single supply of Copper - their only way of creating heavy units.



This picture is shortly after I declared war on France. I moved troops in quickly to take the city that must hold. I was able to take the city, but suffered major causalties. In the northern portion of France, my troops invaded from Perisan land and took the city of Tours quite easily.




The next target was Orleans, France's major center of industry. Although Paris was the economic center, I knew that Orleans had alot more production capability which I was not ready to allow turned against me. So, as you can see in the below screenie, I made my assualt on Orleans from both Persian lands and from Rheims. After severely bombarding the city, it fell. I learned that catapults are a general's best friend. On a side note, Tours (that backwater French city I captured to the north) rioted and joined the Persian Empire. This was a loss I was almost expecting and one that I didnt really care about, greater France was mine.




After that it was all down hill for the French. Paris was the lone French city and my troops quickly converged on her. Paris, although producing alot of gold, was no center of industry and I knew that bombarding the defenders would yeild chances that I would be willing to take when I stormed the city. I was right. The picture below is of France after Paris fell. I had to deal with the ensueing rioting and all, but other than that it was a cakewalk rebuilding France, as I hadnt destroyed much of it during the war (it happened too fast to take advantage of alot of pillaging).




Once France had been subdued, it was all back to peacetime building. As you can see in the screenshot above, my economy had suffered severely by not only pre-war economics, but the war itself was extremely costly. After Paris fell I immeditately started building Cultural buildings in France to stem the Persian culture from creeping in on the French cities. In the main kingdom I built up markets and other economy-based buildings to try to bring the Aondraen economy out of the toilet. When I was doing business with some of the other AIs, I was able to buy a world map which interestingly enough showed me the location of the 'New World'. It is pictured below, wrought with barbarian cities.




Here is a picture of the larger world. It gives a good visual of how the entire world is going along. There have been some big wars, but nothing that has crushed any civilization yet... The world seems to have a very good feel and has stabilized, but it wont last too much longer. The light green (shaped now like a half-moon thanks to French soil) is the Aondraen Empire. And with this world map I begin to understand the larger world past my borders, seeing what sort of issues I will be playing in soon when I enter the 'true' international stage.




More to come soon, this isnt all of today's session but it is a good chunk, but its getting late so I will post more when I can. Hope you enjoy it!

[Smellycowsquid]

Wow, that 'New world' will require a long time(and a lot of units) before it is tamed!

[ElConejo]

Originally posted by Smellycowsquid
Wow, that 'New world' will require a long time(and a lot of units) before it is tamed!

Indeed, I have already begun making plans and looking at suitable places for my first colony. I suspect I will build up a single city-state there (hopefully along the strait) and gain cultural power there, while shipping troops slowly to the new colony, then start expanding north or south or both. Just in the works, I am no where near being able to do it, but I need to plan ahead, esp now that I am coming up in the world.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Nice piece great pics

[Metaliturtle]

Take a barb city around the "panama canal" of the new world

This way you can move ships through much faster and dominate the seas.

[ElConejo]

Originally posted by ChrisiusMaximus
Nice piece great pics

Thank you very very much, I am glad others are appreciating it. I try to take the best screenies possible to give you guys a good idea of what is going on and what its like. There will be many more to come, and I hope you enjoy those as well.

[ElConejo]

Originally posted by Metaliturtle
Take a barb city around the "panama canal" of the new world

This way you can move ships through much faster and dominate the seas.

In some respects I intend to do just that. Oddly enough the barbarians havent settled the strait of this world's panama canal, so I will have to settle it myself, which is fine with me. Once I do so I will be attempting to set up a canal city and a defense city. The defense city will be built first if I can help it, and the canal city will come some time later once my navy has grown to maturity and I have the ability to rule the area. I have a nice screen shot of my proposed landing zone, I'll post it sometime tonight hopefully.

[ElConejo]

OK, so the rest of the last update .. I am a bit behind because of school work. But as I said in my last post, there was some missing screen shots of the next few dozen turns or so... which sucks, but I went back and grabbed a few so that you guys wouldnt be completely out of the loop.

We should start where I left off - France had been conquered under the mighty heel of Aondraes. And I have to say, that conquering France was a morale boost for me, because up until I took Orleans I wasnt entirely sure whether or not I was going to survive long in this game at all, like I said the beginning was less than optimal. But, now with France conquered, and the Kingdom having three new cities added to it, I felt that we could overcome.

Rebuilding France was a breeze, considering I had done minimal damage to the infastructure in my campaign. A few mines and roads, farms and cottages and France was up to full strength - except for one thing: culture. In capturing the French cities, they had lost their cultural strength against the Persian borders to the west. Thus the borders of Persia were right up to the door of Orleans. This scared me because I had already lost Tours to the Persian culture, and I didnt want to loose my bigger fish.

So what I set out to do was pump as much culture from Lyons and Orleans as I possibly could - rushing Theatres and Libraries, and then setting the city to Build Culture for a good 20 turns. I dont know if it was the best in the long run, but it worked - the borders were pushed back a few squares and I now feel confident that the Persian cultural might will not take France away from me.

Mao's golden age sprung him into the leader position on the ladder, and I was hangin out in 6th place more or less comfortably. I had significantly risen from my place much farther down, and with France pumping gold and culture for the greater Kingdom I had lifted myself out of the whole my situation had dug for me.

I was doing a lot of healthy trading with Fredrick (Germany), Cyrus (Persia), Ghandi (India) and Washington (America). Basically I was trading tech around to keep up with the big boys, and gained quite a bit of gold from French clams and my dyes and bananas. Plenty of nations were at war with each other, but nothing was really happening, and I was trying to stay out of them as much as possible.

But then the Arabs started making some real progress in their war against England. They took two cities and skyrocketed themselves to the forefront of the ladder just from shear military might, while sending England to sit with Spain at the bottom. I started to assess my situation, and found that again, I would not be able to compete with the more advanced nations. My country - nearly entirely covered in jungle still - would not be able to produce the hammers or beakers to keep up with some of the more civilized ladder boys.

Thus I came to my second conclusion that involved major military action: I had to take over another neighbor - one with a developed landscape - in order to be able to compete with the international world at large. I looked at my three bordering neighbors: Fredrick of Germany, Mansa of Mali, and Cyrus of Persia. I had open borders with all, and could see the outlaying land on my border to them. I quickly came to the conclusion that my good German friend had to bite the dust - for Greater Aondraes. My line of thinking was simple: Germany had an excess amount of minerals - iron and copper. They had developed all their lands and their cities were powerfully built up. Persia simply hadnt the land that was useful enough for me to want... the Mali just hadnt developed their land or cities.

Of course this is a double edged sword: Fredrick was the number two dog on the ladder - in the world. Fighting him was not going to be a walk in the park, and I had to be ready. Here we have my first screenshots, I began to devise a plan of attack with regards to Germany. I sent a Knight to each of Fredrick's cities, to observe what he had in each. At the time, he had about 20 longbows, half a dozen Knights, same amount of Macemen and Pikemen. When I was doing my surveys, I did not even have HALF that amount. Nonetheless I began to draw up my plans and routes of attack on Germany:




I quickly sent my entire industry into completing as many knights, macemen and longbows that I could. The most shocking thing occured when I was spying on Fredrick - the Arab Empire destroyed all the remenants of the English Empire! In a few turns I had the tech (from the healthy trading I spoke about earlier) for Grenaders, and some time later Cavalry. I immediately upgraded all those units I could, and starting punking Spain out of sacks of gold. Every few turns I would go and demand gold as tribute - it was half the reason I was able to upgrade all my units so fast.

America declared war on Greece, and they exchanged a few cities while I was doing my build up. Fredrick had the same research as me (actually a few more I didnt have) and at this point he had 31 (!) Rifleman across his 9 cities. He also had a few Grenadiers and about a half dozen cavalry. This scared me.. because the main force I would be attacking with was cavalry at this point. So I switched my strategy and started pumping Grenadiers and Catapults to destroy those Riflemen. I found out around this time that Aondraes is NOT a warmachine... producing that many units took far too long and taxed my economy far beyond it's limit.

In the time it took for me to build up my army Mao had fallen to second banana and Fredrick resumed his place as top dog on the ladder. I had moved up to third place but was far behind Mao. I had 6 Grenadiers, 6 Cavalry, and 13+ Catapults (I told you I didnt have much from that sorry assed "warmachine") when I decided to declare war. Things went exactly as I had planned, I invaded moving toward Hamburg, and once there bombarded the city down to 0% defenses and sacrificed some catapults then used my Grenadiers to take Hamburg. Germany tried to counter by attacking in near Arenz. Those forces were crushed in my territory, and soon Cologne and Barcelona had fallen to the same fate as Hamburg.





My bombarding and attacking was working excellent, and Germany's cavalry was unable to strike back in a coordinated or mighty push enough to dislodge me. My economy was at an all-time low. I remember thinking to myself "if this war keeps up long enough I will lose anyu advantage or defense I have". Thus I made it my imparitive to take every city of Germany. As my troops were moving toward Munich (after taking Berlin in the pre-determined move) I got the shock of my CivLife:

The horns blarred and red letters streaked: Mao has declared war on you!

To be honest I was beside myself. Mao being half way around the continent wouldnt be here for a long time right? Germany would be ousted by then so I could - whats this? A frigate and galleon of Chinese origin? Landing on the outskirts of Tuego the Chinese had sent me a nice present: 3 Knights and a good handful of archers. Tuego's small garrison was overtaken quickly, and I sprang into action to retake it. I immediately contacted my good friends the Mali - who bordered with Tuego. I pursuaded them to declare war on the Chinese, and diverted some newly created troops (originally headed for Germany) to Tuego. Between the Mali knights and my own troops, Tuego was retaken without incident.

The Russians and the Spanish got into a war as well during all this, even though I never stopped pimping Spain for her gold. My troops in Germany continued their assualt and were making incredibly great progress.





When I was taking German cities, I wouldnt leave any garrison in it as I pressed onward toward the next city - because I knew that Germany didnt have any offensive units any more and wouldnt likely come out of her cities. However, Stuttgart was taken by the Chinese! They snuck in and stole it, and I diverted four cavalry (who were heading for my stack) and retook the city by themselves without much problems. The city fell and I assume it was the last of the Chinese assualt units in my region because when I attempted to make peace with Mao, he willingly paid me 50 gold to get out of my hair!

The rest of Germany was without incident, not many of my original troops survived the entire war, but I got a ton of good promoted units and all of Germany was mine. With this new addition to the Kingdom, I have no doubts that we will be able to surpass the rest of the nations of the world. After all, I just conquered the NUMBER ONE COUNTRY.





As I had done with France, I immediately started pumping culture from Germany, and even sent a Great Artist to culture bomb the northernmost city of my new province. Setting my sights ever toward the future, I have even plotted a very nice place for my colony on the New World:



There is very much more to come, now that the strength of the Aondraes Empire has been shown and we are the number one nation in the world, there is no doubt in my mind that we will be continuing our dominance and ever moving toward the future in this world we are now firmly a part.