Civ4BtS : Pitboss APT - MASTERS 2016

[astrologix]

Turno 448: Kankan declara la guerra a Isabelina

[CHINCHIN]

Abusones!!

[astrologix]

Creo que te va a salvar la campana

[CHINCHIN]

Que habréis hecho que hasta la partida a petado. Sale como desconectada.

Por lo que comenta Ot4e hay tope de GG. Los que habrá sacado.

[astrologix]

He rearrrancado la partida, entra a ver, CHINCHIN

[CHINCHIN]

Ahora sí. "Mocte ha obtenido una victoria por dominación"

Enhorabuena!!

Al final me salvo la campana

[astrologix]

Enhorabuena a Ot4E !!!

Una gran lección de estrategia y táctica militar. Por fortuna, logré subirme al carro azteca y participar en la aventura

[CHINCHIN]

Mi crónica:

Mi idea inicial era comenzar agresivo, pero viendo que mis vecinos tenían muy pocas tropas me dedique a buildear.
Conseguí 2 corporaciones y un buen número de ciudades, saque varias tech, fui el único que investigó a buen ritmo durante toda la partida. Entonces me fije en Sal, muy débil, cuando comencé a construir unidades a destajo, Sal ya tenía un buen ejercito, pero aproveche el ataque fulminante de Mocte, que ya había aplastado a Indios y celtas, para tomarle 2 ciudades.

Cuando parecía que el próximo era yo, estallo la guerra Mocte-Justiniano, era una buena ocasión para atacar al azteca, pero siempre estaba atento a mi potencial y dejaba las tropas justas para que fuera difícil entrarle, además tenia un montón de ciudades que dándole al látigo en un momento dado podía sacar muchas tropas.

Así que seguí sacando tech y buildeando, cuando conseguí extender mis corporaciones, un buen número de ciudades y construir la Gran Presa ya fui a por un gran ejercito, sacaba como 8 unidades por turno. Durante ese periodo intente mediar entre Kankan y Justiniano, que estaban en guerra, para unirnos contra Mocte, peo fue imposible.

Justo cuando empezaba a tener un gran ejercito Mocte decidió ir a por mi dejándome muy mal herido, dejo varios apilados para acabar el trabajo y volvió con todo sobre Justiniano, que ya estaba bastante tocado. Pero calculo mal y pude aplastar sus ejércitos, aun así me quede con 4 ciudades y poquísimas tropas.

Fui recuperándome poco a poco, construyendo nuevas ciudades y tropas, pero cuando Justiniano cayo y Mocte vino con todo, más Kankan que se unió, ya fue imposible resistir, solo me salvo la victoria de Mocte.

[OT4E]

Sorry for english. I appreciate if someone helps me with translation.

Part1

This time I decided to act as quick as possible and plan the first conquest on almost the first turn after initial 10 turns of peace. I know people do not often have stable culture by that time so my bet was put on growing Great artist extremely early. I bought size of 9 city and was relying on Caste system on the first row of turns. I thought it was good idea because you prefer not to whip population early before your food storages are full. But it turned out really terrible because my starting location contained no luxuries and size of 9 city went unhappy without military presense.

Yes, I dont buy anything except airships because you'd better invest in settlers and workers early. Also it is not good idea to buy many improvements because if you buy workers you can simply build them during first 2-3-4-5 turns.

So I had to keep high level of culture to deal with unhappiness. I ran out of gold but I didnt know that I was going to fight with strike whole the game long...

Meanwhile I got Kremlin which is good by itself but of course it is awesome for aztecs. Please ban it (Kremlin, not aztecs) next time. In fact my victory was brought by Kremlin but not by any superior skills. And getting Kremlin is always a random gamble factor. I think it breaks the balance.

But returning to the chronicles.. So I have got Great Artist, some units and transports..I had revealed the land of my closest neighbors, Asoka to the South-West and Saladin to the North. Both had nothing. Honestly at that time I should go for Saladin, because protective units were going to be annoying once they were built. Also keep in the mind that madrassa gives better culture than common library and since cities in modern start with libraries you get 40% culture on t25 without special measures like building theatres or culture itself.

But after all I went for Asoka simply because he was in Emancipation and I was still short in luxuries so my cities kept being unhappy without 30-40% of income being spent on drama. Asoka played poorly having almost nothing besides some initial stuff. I am not sure what was he doing for those 10 turns. So in 3-4 he was eliminated and this is considering that his cities were positioned widely and were not very good to capture with naval attack. Also need to mention that I had no chance or need to use Great Artist there.

By that time Asoka's neighbor Brennus got attacked by Justinian who either had great start or played it very well. I whipped at extreme level to get enough marines for naval attack, tanks to finish my opponent whoever it was going to be and transports and some minimal support of destroyers to cover them. But I had only #2 power... That was incredible play by Justinian. So there was nothing surprising that we had met each other and become neighbors and worst enemies in just 5 turns after universal peace was over.


To be continued...

[astrologix]

Ot4E, great start of your chronicle

Unfortunately I don't have time to translate it. Maybe you can use Google Translator to try to give us a reasonable good spanish version

[OT4E]

It will take several days to finish it first of all. Then I can start translating. But do you think it is reasonable? Anyone can translate the whole page, may be I shall just post direct link to translated version?

The main problem with google translate that it doesnt understand civ specific words, like "unit", "tile", "turn" and so on.

[OT4E]

Part 2

After the path of my interests crossed the same path of Justinian it was important to establish borders between us without letting him attack my forces. Cities captured from Asoka were weak, they needed time to recover and build some culture, some of those were lacking important buildings like granaries and lighthouses. I am not even talking about factories and plants which are vital to use the advantage of Kremlin, but about basic infrastructure. The only positive factor in indian lands was that there were many forests left.

Fortunately Justinian wasnt preparing to meet resistance in the east besides of the rest of celtian cities where he didnt meet any resistance at all I think. So I was lucky to raze one of the former Brennus cities and sign a peace treaty with him. .I didnt know what were his intentions but the only thing I was confident in that those were the last turns of peace we could ever have.

Meanwhile in the North Saladin kept growing. He was growing and growing getting the double of my food or even more. I knew he could become terrible military machine once he builds factories and turns into slavery. In the early game I managed to press his borders a bit and plant very good and secure city in the isthmus connecting me and him. The only problem with that city was that it was somewhat far away from my core. As usually I built a theatre there and was planning to get one more Great Artist . But the main achievement was getting quick 40% and making some pressure on his 20% city. This allowed me to attack that city from my culture with tanks later.

So I had 10 turns of peace with Justo and Saladin who could become powerful any time. My cities were pretty worn so I didnt have illusions that I could compete well with him in long play even with former indian cities because they actually needed even more time to grow and develop. So I moved everything towards Saladin. I had to act as sneaky as possible without showing much aggression. Fortunately Saladin didnt produce any fleet, but by the turn of my attack he had managed to get some garnisson. His main mistake was to split it between 2 cities his city on the isthmus and the city on the wheel's spoke. He was sure in positive result for him I believe. The other mistake was neglecting culture.

So on the turn of attack I first of all killed his garnisson in the front city then I sailed in it with some transports and captured one of his core cities which had only 20% of culture. Then I bombed it with GA and cut the rest of his current forces in the spoke. Also I was able to capture one of the further cities, pretty big one. Needless to say that his capital was doomed too. You can see how it looked like on the picture below..



Saladin was no longer a threat though his back cities took several turns to capture. It happened that in the corner was his Holy city and it had appropriate culture so I couldnt hit it from my territory. 2 western cities gone to Isabella. I could contest them and till some moment I thought it was right thing to do, but my peace with Justinian was about to expire and I changed my mind after all. I didnt want to make one more war. Justinian was the main contender, he had stable core with high production. Constantinopolis was size of 15 while my core cities were whipped to 2-3-4 size at most. Combined may be they had 15 pop

So after Saladin was eliminated I jumped into transports with all and moved back to the former Brennus lands. Units were healing aboard. It was really hard to arrive in time but I was lucky to do it. Justinian said I made a double move on the turn when our peace expired. It was truth but he had also made double move one of the turns before, because in general I was playing my turns earlier than him.

What happened after deserves to be written in separate chapter...

[OT4E]

Part 3

Previously from my chronicles you know that I have already captured arabian and indian lands, but I havent mentioned the price of those. First of all I got borders with more developed neighbors Justinian and Isabella. Therefore it required even more military, especially the case with Justo it was really urgent because he realized that I am his worst enemy. After the moment I attacked Saladin my income on 0% of science dropped below 0 heavily. During first few turns I had some gold from captured cities but they disappeared really quick. So I had to invent something and it was overflow-driven economy. In apt-mod you get gold from overflow, which you never get in common BTS. So the trick is simple you just whip/chop +get some overflow into something small and you get gold instead of hammers. But it is much better than producing hammers. Not as good as if you grow cities but I could stand that. In my case I mainly built barracks and there is no problem with overflow if you use Kremlin. During the whole game I got thousands of gold this way.

Also I always build National Park in modern games. This time I got really good city with 10 or 11 forests total. Unfortunately I had to stay in slavery all the time to produce units, so it was hard to generate useful GPs, Great Artists. In fact they are better than any other. Normally you cant advance into enemy's territory if he has any standing army. You can attack from sea but challenging for seas demands you to build a lot of ships which cant capture cities by themselves. So this is dilemma what to do. And GA is good solution because you only need to catch opponent's main army and then you can walk through his lands. You do not always get opportunity to tear enemy land into pieces like I've done with Saladin, but there are always options for Great Artists.So it is really strange that noone had tried to use it against me.

After initial 1 Great Artists and staying in Slavery for like 20 turn I switched to Caste and Pacifism to make more GPS. I couldnt stay in Caste for long because I needed units so I had to get all the GPs in the short timespan like 3 GPs in 5 turn. The plan included getting 2 GPs at the same turn what was possible with my great National park city. So when the time came to attack Justinian I had 3 GA's in the backpack.

By that time I have already lost 1 city in the front, which was important because in fact I wanted to bomb that city, because it was not near the coast. Take this on the note. I try to avoid having coastal front cities because they can be bombarded by ships. Front city can be often attacked directly with tanks but it is not easy if it has 60% and you cant bombards.

But after all I decided to bombard another front city. Anyway I had 3 Great Artists and I didnt have illusions I can capture Constantinopolis this way. I only needed to purge Justinian from former Brennus lands.

Here is a pic I found on about this.


I easily took my city back and it was just a beginning. My main forces were on transports which I tried to keep as far as possible without letting Justinian know about my attack too early or too much. As you see I could direct hit 20% city. By the way one of the problems with byzantium is that they cant put artists in their theatre so they have to produce culture with hammers which people do not always do. So cultural bombs work great against byz.

In the following turns I caught and eliminated almost entire Justinian forces.



Tanks kill units in cities pretty well as you can see. I also used some Great Generals without true need in them and I regretted it later.

But my luck was about to finish by that time. Without letting my army to heal I bombed next city and tried to direct hit Tolosa. I had something like 25 tanks against 6-8 antitanks against which I had nice initial odds, like 30-35%. But I lost all and failed to take city. Needless to say that it was not necessary sacrifice at all. I lost my last GA, my big well-promoted tank stack and initiative. So I had to create new army and do it quick, and keep the following dozen of turns defending hoping that Justinian will return me a favor and do some similar mistake. But in fact he was doing very well...

But I will tell you about it a little bit later...

[OT4E]

Part 4

You know that after a serie of lucky victories I had driven my nation to disaster. I was trying to win as soon as possible and I felt myself unstoppable. I didnt let my population grow, I was whipping from scratch ruining bonus from Kremlin but I wanted army here and now and it seemed that 1 turn could decide everything. But I payed for this.

As I said I have lost mostly whole land army. I had to withdraw more and more units from former arabian territories. I had to produce many wealth because of high maintance caused by low population and large number of cities.

The thing I was not wiahing most of all was Justinian controlling the middle of the land. Honestly I was keeping nothing at my core and 2-3 commandos couls just raze everything. Brennus planted a city in the middle before dying and Justo took it. But to my fortune he didnt make any pressure through the middle and even let me kick him from there and plant my own cities. I think it was his main strategical mistake.

In the addition to all my troubles Kankan has researched Flight and Justo successfully stole it at the same turn. I had a plan to steal Flight from Isabella but needed some extra turns to perform this operation. I also had to use opportunity to steal gold from Isa which I returned later at least partially but it I couldnt turn her from becoming hostile.

During those 3-4 turns of not having planes Justinian made attacks from different sides. He attacked my colonies in the middle and razed those cities. He was constantly bombarding my units in the fron so I couldnt step out and my only hopes were coming from bunker.

Fortunately I caught him on a mistake. I was hiding several artilleries in transports and once he entered my territory I destroyed his tank stack.My plan was simple, not to let my bomb fall in one turn, so I could keep all my fleet there denying him from coming closer by sea. This provoked him to make attack by land.

But globaly I was very unlucky. When I finally got Flight my planes were falling down like paper ones. I lost 30 fighters and killed just 12 within the first few turns of trying to parry his air forces.

Another thing making me sad was that Justo could easily throw fleet from inner sea to the outter using forts but my land didnt allow it, the closest path was too far from front. So I basically had to build 2x more ships than Justo to keep parrity.

Once the situation started stalemating I noticed that Isabella is preparing attack on me so I had to reinforce my nothern border. Before this it looked like she was playing her own game without paying much interest. But either almost empty lands of Arabia were looking too attractive or I made her angry by stealing her tech and gold, but she started acting aggressive. She planted a city from which she could direct hit my front, made fleet and fort system to be able to unload and attack and was gathering troops. I need to say that with her 12 cities she was doing not bad at all. They all were size of 10-15, she had corp and nice production, probably one of the top. But I noticed it right in time and there was no war at that time.

Btw one of the new revealing from this game were airports. They allow you to send some units each turn to the hot spot. This is in the addition to what you can produce and bring by land. I used them widely.

So I managed to keep my position at that time and was thinking of a plan to conquest. But details you will know from the next post as usually...

[astrologix]

Very good reading! I can't wait for the following chapter. Thank you OT4E