Civ4BtS : LEMURIA - XXX Pitboss APT

[astrologix]

Enhorabuena a Capado!!

[astrologix]

Los puntos APT serán incorporados en la clasificación trimestral del 30 de junio.

Log de accesos a la partida habilitado en la patoweb (Menu Detalles partida/Configuración/Renovar)

[astrologix]

Enhorabuena OT4E!!!! Gran victoria!!!!

Y gran partida de 2metraninja como Cesar!! Excelente número 2 !!!

Y Carlomagno - Milarepa, que supo navegar en aguas turbulentas!!! Merecida medalla de bronce !!!

[astrologix]

Una amplia y merecida victoria!!!:

[Estilpón]

Enhorabuena al ganador y a los compañeros del podio, muy merecido

[HBHR]

Qué giro en los acontecimientos!!!! No se suponía que la nueva colonia fundada bloqueaba la victoria diplomática/religiosa?

Felicitaciones a los del podio Yo Chaka, no duré lo suficiente como para tener algo que contar

[astrologix]

Qué giro en los acontecimientos!!!! No se suponía que la nueva colonia fundada bloqueaba la victoria diplomática/religiosa?

Capado convirtió al budismo una de las ciudades de la colonia.

[CHINCHIN]

Enhorabuena Ot4e, victoria aplastante una vez más. Y a 2metraninja y Miralepa que lo hicieron de maravilla.

[Milarepa]

¡Felicidades Ot4e! ¡Gran partida!

[astrologix]

Los puntos APT serán integrados en la clasificación trimestral del 30 de junio de 2019

Los otros jugadores eliminados de esta partida fueron:

Jugador Lider
Magno Anibal
HBHR Chaca
Pali00 Hammurabi
perroandaluz Saladino
Hitrec Toro Sentado
palanx Wang Kon
Mormegil Zara Yakub

[OT4E]

Sorry for English. I will start my chronicles and hopefully have time to translate them as well.

This time I had difficult start. Only non-irrigated wheat and cow near the capital and non-blessed piece of tundra without rivers and lack of land green tiles and hills.

On the other hand it looked pretty isolated and with FiIN and IND I could make a use of even common coastal tiles.

I also uncovered several tiny islands and committed on wonder gambit. I found a cute place to construct TGLH which was the most important part of early development. I knew my capital wasnt very good for wonders since it had just 2 or 3 forest and the only hill and in the addition to all it was unhealthy at size of 3.

I settled 2 islands very early without big hope of growing them high (most of the had just a single food resource) but they were doing good job by filling up my trade routes and providing some commerce from coasts even without lighthouse boost.

And then I encountered the first problem which turned out to be very fruitful. It was Wang. He was also FIN and alone. He got Oracle but what is worse his piece of land looked much better than mine.

After examining his graphs I realised that his development was very slow so it looked like he had sacrificed a lot to get that wonder. I knew I could probably beat him to Collosus because of cheap forges and wonders for IND which seemed also vital on that map.

But this was a small deal. I threw everything to grab all I can from "his" land and outmass him. This worked out really well and I managed to get a city near horses and the one on the small land bridge with 4 food resources. He only had 2 cities and I had 6. I was very very short in hammers but was ready to upgrade some queuchas to give him fight.

Need to mention that I had to deliver my settlers by water to get there. We had land connection via tundra to the south but this could hardly bring any progress.

Of course when I robbed the best locations from Wang he realised that something was going wrong and declared me. At some point I was very close from failture when barbs were sieging my city from north and korean axes were coming from south-west. I could hardly find time to upgrade units.

But after all Wang turned out to be as bad fighter as he was in domestic business. When first chariots arrived he continued sending forward his solo axes. So soon I could even capture his city. He wasnt in slavery and it worked for me very well. So he was locked in the capital and it was a matter of time to breakthrough with my 7 cities. Need to mention that his cap was much better than mine and I wanted to get control over it ASAP so I put most efforts I could to take it with what I had. And with some amount of luck I succeeded.

Then it began the golden age (not just in game) of Inca because the land between Wang and my next neighbor was still untaken. Most of wonders were also unclaimed or claimed by me and I added 1 great wonder production city to my first two, the capital and the one with TGLH. And people from far away land were not showing great results.
End of chapter 1.

[Estilpón]

Thanks for sharing!

[2metraninja]

I will write in English too and give automatic translation underneath.

First of all, congratulations to Ot4e for the well deserved victory. And congratulations for everyone for the interesting game.

I was Cesar / Rome for those who do not know. Here is the first part of my story too.

EARLY START
Romans started in awful land and position. Not a single good food sourse. Only Calendar food and wines. No rivers either. Later on it turned out I do not have copper nor horses nearby as well. I moved my settler in the hope of finding some useable food and I saw a hill pigs on the second turn and I settled Rome there.To add to the poor surrounding, I met both Arabs and Zulus on something like turn 5 or 6, so we were very very close to each-other. I made a rush to Bronze working only to find I indeed have no copper, while my Aggressive neighbor Zulu have copper just over the narrow channel. To add to this, Arabia was settling in straight line towards me and declared me a war. Maybe this was Saladin's way to tell me he does not want me to settle in his direction. About this time I met HRE too to my East. So I had Zulus on South, Arabia on North, HRE on East and tiny tiny peninsula and sea on my West.

THE ZULU WAR
In this harsh situation I had to choose to do something extraordinary or became prey for my many and close and having Copper resources neighbors. I had no other choice, but to build archers, but at some point I thought instead of sitting in my cities and waiting for my neighbors to slowly suffocate me with their copper units, I decided to go for Archery rush. I used my Imperialistic trait to build cheap settlers and settle cities only to have more forests in their culture and then used my few workers to chop all the forests in sight. Chop in new settlers and in archers.

In this time Zulu was doing nice, working his food rich lands and was just settled his second city when I was at 4 or 5 cities already. He must have been way too confident being the scary Zulu that he will be the hunter and I will be the prey at some time, also maybe he was thinking I am fighting a war with Arabia on my other border, so he was not building proper defence. I prepared workers and archers and warriors and whatever I had at hand to execute one-shot attack on the Zulus. I had choosed the best possible route which will hide my intentions until the very last possible moment.


Zulu was just realized that his copper is over the channel and went to Archery tech for archers instead. At the turn I declared and stepped in Zulu territory I saw he had his first archer built. This was bad news. But luckily he was not able to produce many archers actually. I had like 12 archers and 5-6 warriors total, while he had 1-2 archers and 4-5 warriors. But he had his 40% capitol built on hills and he was producing archers with alarming speed. I took Zulu second city after small bloodshed, but his capitol was still very strong. I surrounded his capitol, denying him good production and food sources, promoted wounded units from first battle and taking huge risk, even with some bad luck, I was able to conquer his capitol and finish him off. That was huge relief as only at his capitol I had more food than I had in ALL my other 4-5 settled cities. And Zulu second city was not bad either.



RECOVERY
After I conquered Zulu future was looking way brighter, but not that much bright actually. HRE on my East was having his powergraph growing and growing higher than anyone else and there was possibility I was the target of this growth. Arabia on my North refused to open borders or trade anything with me and I was still without copper, despite I had found a copper source on the West peninsula but it was long long way to travel through hills and deserts and I had met USA there on the West, so I did not knew if I will be able to secure this copper at all.
Luckily HRE's target was Ethiopia and I was able to connect my copper and feel a bit more secure.

Then I went for Iron working as what is Rome without proper use of his Praetorians? This time I had luck and I had Iron in the ex-Zulu territory. I started planning how to get rid of Arabia, who was still refusing to open borders or trade with me.

ARABIAN WAR
I started to arm myself and prepared a lot of chariots, despite having the possibility to build Praetorians with 2 promotions (thanks to my Imperialistic trait I got a Great General from the Zulu war). Chariots were great choice in this situation, because Arabia, just as anyone else in similar situation would do was fearing Praetorians and were building ton of axes and putting them behind city walls. I carefully positioned units and workers, plus galleys full of praetorians to attack his inner coastal cities, to be able to surprise Arabia with my chariots and it worked great, unless there was my bad luck. I lost like 7 battles with 75 or more % chance of win and at this stage of the game, this is quite a lot to simply overcome as if nothing happened. I still conquered 2 of his cities, but he was able to stabilize his positions and the long war of attrition begun.

At this time we had a small border problem with HRE, who was thinking I am settling way too aggressive on his border, despite this city I founded was closer to my capitol than was his border city to his capitol. As I said we were with really really close starting positions. HRE even brought his army on the border and was ready to attack me and most likely raze my border city, but he tried to talk to me first and in the talks we were able to reach agreement to not fight unnecessary wars. I signed the NAP clauses HRE wanted and we were both happy I guess.

Meanwhile on the main North front Saladin started to build his Protective super Archers and keep them behind his city walls, I was making circles around pillaging everything and waiting for reinforcements. I eventually outproduced and outsmarted him and conquered all of Arabia, but this was sadly for me already instead of blitzkrieg, it turned in to bloody and long mess. At the end of the Arabian war I was in bad economic and population and research state.

Here I will end my first story before introduce the Incas and Babylon - the two nations that shaped the game for me the most and had the biggest impact on the outcome of the game in my humble opinion.

[OT4E]

When I solved my initial problems I had already got big advantage compared to any other nation. I believe I had top demographics in all metrics,but also I had key wonders: TGLH, Colossus and MoM excluding many others. I made GP farm in Seoul with GreatLibrary and National epic, this was one of the best cities in terms of production with many forests left untouched.

So my wonders were distributed in 3 cities making a good base for cultural victory. However I never rely on just culture because it is the easiest victory condition to spoil (excluding religious victory and releasing colonies I guess).

The next goal was to snowball my advantage but before I needed to win circumnavigation race. My success was heavily relying on water because I still was very limited in land tiles. So I couldnt let someone be threatening me from water. Though I would also prefer to delay going for Astronomy by my own as long as possible. This is why I started my campaign against Franklin, I saw he started teching Astronomy forcing me to do it as well.

But first of all I saw people started plotting against me. At that point my tech pace was better than everyone's else combined but I knew it couldnt last long. Jerjes and Franklin were both on my continent, but Jerjes was playing a small nation role and was buying my techs. Franklin played differently and didnt try to make stable relations with me. Also he had some colonies making him potentialy strong nation in terms of navy.

I could threaten Franklin and force him to sign NAP with me and possibly not even trading with others but I believe that in 40 turns he would turn back from me and I would face Caesar's and Franklin fleet combined with tons of land troops for potential invasion. I didnt feel it possible to get to Combustion in 40 turns so I saw the only opportunity to attack Franklin first while I had significant power and technology advantage. So I did.

I spend thousands gold to upgrade galleys, triremes and horses archers to galleons, frigates and cuirassiers. The plan was to strike to his core as soon as possible before he can make his own astronomy based navy and before Caesar can reinforce his cities from back. I think I had very short window before Caesar would load 30 units into his brand new galleons and settle them behind the walls. So I almost ignored islands and brought all I could to Washington and New york.

I must admit that I had some luck in initial combats or Franklin made some mistakes trying to put unnecessary fights instead of pulling back and waiting for allied troops. But I did it well without losing much time or army.

Also need to note that the race was going on all the time. After galleons I sent frigates, after cuirassiers some grenadiers to defend new cities, after frigates ships of the Line. Without reinforcing my front lines heavily I could not keep what I've got because Caesar appeared with something like 20 frigates in just a few turns after Chemistry became available for him.

Anyway Caesar who have already become the top rival appeared to discuss peace terms. By that moment I had the only parthner on the other continent, Hammy. He was very concerned about Caesar's power whiat I believe was normal for people from Caesar's continent. Because left alone I had no chance to contest Caesar with much more land available (half of my land was hungry tundra) despite of my temporal technological advantage. But human nature doesnt work in that way and people were plotting against me so easily because my score and demographical lead without much care of making Caesar too strong as well.

Peace with Caesar meant death to Hammy and Caesar didnt try to conceal that honestly. I fully realised that also. However I dont believe that Hammy could do nothing. He had all military techs from me at good rate and very early, he had decent land and productions and finally plenty of forests to chop into troops and fight. If you cant take basic measures and not get destroyed with a huge spread of ways to defend well why would I care?

On the other hand after pulling Caesar into full scale land war Hammy would untie my hand to invade him. This was the only way to destroy Rome for us both. And it didnt demand much from Babylon, just defend properly, draft, whip and chop. 40 turns were OK timeframe considering Caesar needed at least 10 turns to prepare his campaign and Hammy had this time to prepare as well as the time he had all before, like 30 more turns of having Military Tradition, being Agg and having draft button available. I dont even mention Steel or Railroad coming soon.

But both worst scenario happened together:
1) Hammy didnt do anything to save himself and extend war for at least 40 turns
2) people didnt recognize Caesar as a threat even after containing Hammy's land.

I know it is subjective but I feel it like some kind of bias when people do not care about winning by themselves but care who win the game. Whats the matter for Juan or Carlo for who wins if they dont? Perhaps you can justify it by getting higher in final score chart, but for me it ruins overall impression from the competition. And it would be better for them if we destroy each other by alone rather than one of captures another with help and that one wins even easier and more confident.

It would be interesting for me to have a fair race with Caesar at that point but challenging the whole continent of allied against me nations, the continent which was 5 times bigger than mine piece of land, that was absurd.

So I was ready to accept lose and was waiting for the game to finish. However I prepared to defend myself, produced decent number of destroyers, started making air fleet. But my chances to attack him succesfully were 0. It was impossible against competent player.

The idea to try diplomatic victory was to more a way to make it less boring rather than serious attemp to win. I was surprised that noone didnt do anything against it. I would not be disappointed if it simply didnt work. But I am confident that trick with colonies was not legal way to block it.

By myself I do not value any kind of diplomatic victories high. The fact that people didnt crash the next religous leader vote make me feel even worse about this victory. Some people here say it was deserved, but everything else says it wasnt. Therefore I'd love to see Caesar as a winner of this game, because obviously he turned cards into his favor by the end and was going to win in whatever way.

Well, at least it is over. GG. Thank you.

[OT4E]

Some screenshots below

Starting screen


How I started settling Wang's area and stole his horses:

Well horses may be were closer to me but I had to travel by water there

Things in develop


Some medieval demoghraphs:


The true golden age of inca


On the way to America


A bit later:


Something that will unlikely happen again: