Napoleon scenario

[Dis]

No thread on this one either.

I'm about to start it as the French- the logical choice. But I'm scared . How can I win with infantry against some nasty looking cavalry the other nations have? I'll post my summary when I'm finished. I just started the game, I haven't evaluated my cities yet and developed a strategy.

[Dis]

whew! Finally done. It only took about 7 and 1/2 hours, but it seemed much longer.

Where do I start. As I said, I played as the French. I'd like to see the designer notes/diaries and see what they intended. I figured they intended France to expand all the way to Russia as in real life. But that wasn't going to happen in my game. I was playing on Regent level btw.

You start off with war with 4 other civs. I didn't like that. My hope was to knock the 2 small ones out to reduce the amount of civs I was warring with. Well I took Amsterdam real friggin' fast. And I took 2 northern Italian cities just like that. Austria declared war on me so I took Venice without much problem. Strategically it didn't seem beneificial to pursue Austria any further at that point as Spain and Prussia had declared war on me. It was all I could do to keep them from overtaking my cities. And England would drop some units off near a lightly defended city complicating things- in fact they took venice one turn when I only had 1 unit there by accident. I took it back the next turn.

I slowly tried to stabilize my borders and then launched another attack on the Italian civ. I took over Rome. After that I had to endure another brutal Spanish attack. But a little while later I took over Naples and quickly took over the last Italian city. There I knocked out 2 of the civs. But the problem is no one likes me except for the Danish who I'm in a permanent alliance with (they would attack me too if they could). After finishing off with Italy I quickly realized I would not be taking anymore cities. I could have, but things were becoming too difficult to defend. A quick check of the math on the victory screen showed I would win on turn 96. So I spent the rest of the game defending my borders.

This really was interesting in the end. For some reason the Spanish had ungodly numbers of cavalry. All game long I was fighting them and they had reasonable numbers of cavalry based on the number of cities they had. It's like magically they were able to get over 30 cavalry and continue attacking me. Maybe they were in a golden age, but still. I was thinking maybe they did have some scripted events- but I know that isn't true. How did they get so many cavalry? They only have like 12 cities.

I had a ton of cities, but I was being outproduced by everyone. I think my GNP, manufactured goods, and productivity was 6th and 7th. Horrible. I had so many entertainers to combat war weariness I had little production. Research was a problem mid way through the game. I researched 2 techs total. I was getting gang raped, and had to set my research to 0 to get as much gold as I could.

There are many strange things in this game as well. Like one time I finally got peace with the Spanish. But the next turn they attacked me and there was no declaration of war. There were other strange anomolies with the diplomacy as well. These seem to be bugs to me.

I guess the designer intended France to be gang raped. I guess that is like real history (though my memory is fuzzy on the napoleonic wars). But it seemed like in real history France had some unrestrained expansion at the start, it was only later everyone started ganging up on them. That is how it ended up though. Everyone was really pummeling me.

I managed to hold my borders pretty much. I only permantly lost one city- Brussels- that was burned to the ground. My mistake letting Prussian cavalry too far in. I lost a city on the French west coast to the British, but took it back. I held my borders and all my newly aquired cities and VP's.

I guess that is the challenge playing as France. You are to endure being pummelled by the world. I can't say that is the style of play I like. And defending on 4+ sides is not easy. And the war weariness is out of control in this scenario, making the game not very fun for me.

Though I guess I did good even though it didn't seem like I was. I got my second highest scenario score with this scenario. I can't figure that out.

Does anyone know how the scores for scenarios are calculated?

Well I am happy I played as France once. But I don't see myself playing as France ever again in this scenario . England ended up super strong in this scenario (despite taking no cities), they are tempting to play.

[Ecthy]

Sounds like a fun game!

But why didn't you fight on offensively? No way to force peace in that scenario?

[Dis]

you can get peace- usually after a certain number of turns the other civs will allow contact. Except for the locked allianes/wars. France can never talk to Portugal, Netherlands, Italy (they are called something else), and England. But before long Spain, Prussia, Russia, Austria, and the Ottomans will declare war on you because they are just jerks . Sweden may as well, but they are far away and pose no threat. One reason I got dragged into wars was my mutual protection act with the Danish- Denmark. Those bums dragged me into too many wars. I would have taken them out if I could

But I usually had to fight them for like 10 turns before I could even talk to them again. This may have been made easier had I taken a city. I was very offensive the first part of the game. Taking all the Italian cities, Amsterdam and Venice (which was controlled by Austria). But I was being slammed on all 4+ sides, I just didn't have many resources to devote to launch an offensive war. I had to worry about not losing my cities to the slamming I was getting from all sides.

But in the end of the game I finally did get up to 4 armies (with 3 units each). I never did build the small wonder to allow up to 4 unit armies, I knew I wouldn't have much time to use them because of the turn limit. Had I continued playing I'm sure I could have done something with those 4 armies. I would have had 5 armies but I lost an army of cavalry early in the game - the first army I ever lost . 2 or 3 should have been enough to protect the homeland, the fourth could have struck out. But near the end of the game, countries like Russia had over 30 of their infantry units that have attack 6, defense 6. All 30 were in my territory!! I didn't dare ask them to remove them because they would have declared war on me (as Spain did when I asked them to leave). 30 6/6 units on rough terrain is no easy thing. Even with 4 armies.

Italy is the logical country to take. They are weak. I should have ganged up on Austria as everyone else did. They seemed to be the only country more hated than me. They are stuck in the Middle just like France. I only took one Austrian city early. The Russians, Prussians, and Ottomans got the rest.

The problem lies in taking cities you can defend easily. I thought about Barcelona as that is a VP location. but I would not have the mountains (pyrennes I believe) to help protect that city as I did with the French city in the SW. I also thought about Vienna and Berlin, though they had other non VP cities near them I would have had to eliminate/take over as well. I could have hit the ottomans as well. They had no VP cities near me, but I could have taken a regular city.

I had serious thoughts about London in the early game. I parked my fleet in the city that is withing 1 turn of movement of London. I kept them inside the city the whole game. My frigates didn't stand a chance in the open sea- they were being torn apart. But even without sea dominace I could have landed 8 troops near London easily. The thing about England is they weren't really a nuiscane to me until the last 1/4 of the game, I figured I had better leave them alone as they weren't bothering me, and I had my hands full with Spain, Prussia, Russia, and sometimes the Ottomans (Austria never did send many troops into my territory).

Sea dominance would have been nice, but I didn't have the resources. I needed 2 frigates just to take 1 out. Most of my goals were on land anyways. But the problem there lies the fact I have to leave a couple cavalry near coastal location to combat the stacks of 4 cavs/infantry type units England, Spain, and Portugal drop off.

I would have liked to take over Portugal, but without an adequate navy, that wasn't going to happen. I would have had to go through Spain.

I just think France needs to be beefed up for this scenario- my thoughts.

Overall I did have fun, but it is stressing being pummelled on all sides by 6 or 7 civs who all have better production than you.

edit: I forgot to mention I took over Frankfurt as well. There may have been one other central european city I took over, can't remember.

[planetfall]

Dissident,

See:

http://civ3.com/devupdate_napoleonic.cfm

-- PF

[Dis]

ahh that design diary has some good things in it.

First of all they mention non-military research tech that helps with happiness. That would have meant I had to build city structures if I read that right. I didn't have a whole lot of time to build those. But who knows.

But the second more important thing listed in the design diary is diplomacy. I figured the designer wanted France to be at war with everyone in Europe, I neglected my diplomacy a bit.

My time would have been much easier if I could have made 1 or 2 "real" allies (As he said Denmark doesn't count). I would have liked to allied with Spain and maybe the Ottomans.

I'll admit diplomacy isn't one of my strong points of civ. I'm not sure how easy it is to create and maintain alliances with nation like Spain and the Ottoman empire. From the get go these same nations were signing embargos against me. Spain would have been nice because they can harrass and potentially take over Portugal, and keep England off my back. The ottomans would have helped with the conquest of east europe.

Not that I did all that bad as me against the world. It just seemed like it. My score reflects a very healthy win. I was miles ahead of anyone else in VP points. But I could not get up to 60,000. I learned alot about defensive tactics though. Something I never care about usuall, as I'm always on the offensive in my games.

[Aqualung71]

Hmmm, I tried this scenario but only played a few turns and then went on to something else - I'll get back to it soon I hope. I like all the cavalary and stiff redcoats/bluecoats

I also played France, and I recall that before I moved anything on the first turn I looked up the diplomacy screen and traded for whatever luxuries I could get, whored my techs to whoever would buy them, and then got the "non-aligned" nations (I think there are 4 of them at the start) to all declare war on England, et al.

I also got the feeling that France has by far the most powerful cavalry (8 attack vs 6's and 7's?), so that's probably a nice advantage.

Anyway, my personal approach in this scenario (and even more so with Rise of Rome) is to sacrifice early pop points by switching almost all production to workers for the first few turns and then building all those roads. This turns a tough marginal economy into a cash cow and gives you the latitude to spend a bit on luxuries to keep your people a little happier through the interminable warring.

Just a few thoughts - any comments?

I read somewhere that you can win this scenario on the first turn somehow - what's that all about?

Cheers!

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Yes, you can win this Scenario in the first turn, with France and GB, since you can get half of Europe for a MPP


And France is BY FAR the strongest nation here; just make sure to sign everyone against Britain in the 1st turn. Then take out a weak neighbor (I prefer the KoN, since they have a Lux), start your GA, built up infrastructure, and once your Empire is in good shape, mobilize and pump out military for the rest of the game. A good idea is to rush the MilAc with one of your 2 leaders, after building a Cavalry army with the other one. A good way to weaken Britain is filling the first army from the MilAc with Imperial Guards (or Cavs, but this is a little more risky, since the AI will attack armies now) and pillage England.

And you could even revolt immediadetly to Monarchy, this will take care of WW and happiness issues (though I think it would be historically wrong).


Now if you want a real challenge, try Spain or Prussia.
Mid level (most fun IMHO) are Russia and Austria.

Ottomans aren't really fun, they just to far away.

Nevertheless, this Scenario really suffers from the FP bug; I'd wait for the patch...

[planetfall]

Agree with Doc. You can get MPP in first turn cheap. Haven't played yet as jumping ahead to WW2, a one night game. But plan to play this week as Fr. I'm also waiting to figure out how I want to play this scenario. Obviously as Fr you can't start military action right away.

Dissident, I also wonder if there is time in <100 turns to get none military support going. 150 turns, then no problem. But with only 100, it should either be close or not possible. {last night was NFL instead of C3C}.

With this scenario I'm going to try something totally diferent, I will spend the first couple hours figuring out how to play the scenario instead of just jumping in. I have never done that before, it will be interesting to see if it makes any difference or if it is just a waste of time.

Definitely agree, the FP bug is HORRIBLE. It seriously degrades game play ability.

-- PF

[Dis]

FP bug? What is that?

I never did build the forbidden palace. And I did start military action right away . You should at least capture Amsterdam right away. that is easy pickins.

I'm not sure what you are asking about military support. I didn't do any diplomacy in this game- big mistake.

But I'm proud I went against the entire world and got my second highest score in all my scenarios. I learned a lot about tactics battling superior numbers such as that.