How to win at RoR

[Modo44]

Solomwi, maybe you are playing the scenario on a difficulty level too low for you. It seems to me some conquests are designed for 1 or 2 levels above your normal epic game capabilities (at least if playing the "first choice" civs). Try moving it up a bit and you might find yourself in agreement with jon a bit more often.

I think you are missing points about Hadrian's Wall, which make it very much worthwile. At the beginning, when your resources are limited, it makes retaking cities you conquer so much more difficult. Later on, it allows your corrupt cities to become forts - much better ones than those you can make with Legions. See the running Democracy game for a show of that.

By the way, it is more like 30+ Workers with all those juicy Hills around.

[joncnunn]

Don't forget the roading some of those Olives & Wines with Legionary Is. (The ones that aren't going to conquer Sardina & Corsica have plenty of time to road while awaiting upgrades

Originally posted by Modo44

By the way, it is more like 30+ Workers with all those juicy Hills around.

[Aeson]

You can probably gain time on the ToA build with up to 5 Workers first, but optimal is probably going to be 3-4 with the others from other cities. Improve enough tiles so you can run even food at pop 12 with maxed shields, then pump Rome up to size 12 with the same Workers.

I just started playing cause this thread got me interested. You can get Roma up to 41spt when maxed in your GA, up from the 21spt you would start with. It requires 3 Mines on Hills (24 Worker turns), 5 Mines on flats (20 Worker turns), and the turns to move onto the unroaded tiles (2) or crossing rivers (1 time). That cost will vary based on how many Workers are stacked, but probably 4 each time, for 12 more Worker turns. So 56 Worker turns total.

With just Workers from Roma that means 5 turns for the Workers (start with one). Start with a Worker, so your Worker turns will look like:

Turn 0: 1
Turn 1: 1, 2 total (2 turns for first Worker, start GA)
Turn 2: 2, 4 total
Turn 3: 3, 7 total
Turn 4: 4, 11 total
Turn 5: 5, 16 total
Turn 6: 6, 28 total (stop building workers, start 20spt+)
Turn 7: 6, 34 total
Turn 8: 6, 40 total
Turn 9: 6, 46 total
Turn 10: 6, 52 total
Turn 11: 6, 58 total (finished with terrain improvements)
Turn 12: Size 12, 40spt

With 540 shields for ToA, you are passing up 5 turns of max output (with no growth) of 21spt, or 105s. The benefit is getting to 41spt ASAP.

By turn 12, no growth or improvement method will have 252s, 21spt, 14 turns left on ToA if the GA lasted that long, but it will end 5 turns earlier, so take 16 turns. So 28 turns total to build ToA.

By turn 12, using 5 Workers from Roma this way, Roma will have 126s, 41spt, 11 turns left on ToA if the GA lasted that long, but the GA will end 2 turns earlier, so take 12 more turns. (Using the spare 2 Worker turns to build up Roma a bit faster will cut that down to 10 and 11 turns respectively as it is only 4s short.) So 24 (possibly 23) turns to build ToA.

Of course both can be accellerated by outside Workers. A more conventional good growth, decent production queue, will end up somewhere inbetween the two extremes.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by joncnunn

It's not the flip risk I'm concerned about in rasizing Cathargo at all. It's trying to continue my offense in africa. In early game when I'm raiding africa there just isn't enough units to both defend and attack. By raizing all towns there , I am eliminating my need to defend and so can freely burn down several Carthigan towns.

But with the culture retention, I find myself not needing to defend those towns very much anyway, since they're linear. Anything trying to slip by the border town gives me plenty of time to either get a defender back or, preferably, cut down the attacker. I gather legions in Carthago for a few turns, during which the AI sends swords and a few mercs my way, but that's really nothing but a promotion/leader breeding ground. Once I get a stack going in each direction, the occasional war elephant is all Hannibal sends out, which can be cut down before doing any damage without slowing my attack down at all.

On tech path, the AI does not seem to see Philosphacy until it has Literature.
By neither trading them Literature nor giving big discounts to Math and other techs you are delaying them getting Literature.

It's not much past turn 30 that I have Philosphacy (and Imperalism)

Seems that works a little quicker, then. I'm usually starting Imp at turn 30. I've started a new game using your tech approach, btw.

I typically don't mind giving them a discount on math since I have currency waiting in the wings, but that's another aspect I'm going to try your way. In the trades in general, though, I don't think you're getting a lot more out of them over the game. I've yet to be unable to trade tech for tech with the AI, and am also hitting them when their cash is up in between turns where they have tech available.

Modo, on Hadrian's Wall, I think you misunderstood. I'd rather build it myself, and it's definitely a nice wonder to have, but what I was saying is if I can't build it, I want Macedon to have it, since the only other real alternative is Persia. I want Macedon, at least early, acting as a check on Persian expansion, since they never seem to found more than a few new cities themselves and I can hem them in fairly easily in the Balkans. HW, obviously, helps this end in their hands and hurts it in Persian hands. If it looks like Persia's going to get it, I'm going to go to greater lengths to snag it myself than if it looks like Macedon's going to.

It's not often I find myself having to defend in cities, though, which, as I said above, is a big reason I like keeping Carthago. Nora is basically an afterthought (send the army or a pair of legions to take care of it easily enough), and once those two are gone, African Carthage is split in two. This really helps the contingent moving east, and they're pretty much able to cut through those three cities like butter. As I said above, the key motivation to my approach is the early warning the culture borders give you.

Try moving it up a bit and you might find yourself in agreement with jon a bit more often.

On which aspects? Burning Carthago? More enemy attackers actually encourages me to keep Carthago whole rather than burn it down, for the early warn9ing culture borders. Keeping the army empty? I could see sending the army against Spain, but I'd still want it at least partially filled and moving on the first turn. The toughest defender you're going to face is 3, and filled with LI's, the army attacks at 6. Considering that a) I'm only going to face a handful of regular Numidians early and b) I'm going to have several more armies, made up of LIIs, LIIIs and possibly HCs, by the time I face hoplites, 6 attack for that one army is worth bringing it to bear ASAP. On trading? I already acknowledged that may be a level difference, in that there may be enough fewer turns in between the AI getting techs to make it worthwhile to wait.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Don't forget the roading some of those Olives & Wines with Legionary Is. (The ones that aren't going to conquer Sardina & Corsica have plenty of time to road while awaiting upgrades

I think you can only afford to leave a few Legions near Rome, which will hardly be enough with 20 Workers. I would want most of them to go to war ASAP. If you figure in AP (which is Worker-draining due to extreme growth), 30 seems like a reasonable number of Workers. For starters.

The idea of Legions making Roads and Forts is a neat roleplay, but with wars raging all the time, it is not very efficient. Once you get them upgraded, it becomes even more wasteful to use them for Worker-duty.

Originally posted by Solomwi
On which aspects? Burning Carthago? More enemy attackers actually encourages me to keep Carthago whole rather than burn it down, for the early warn9ing culture borders.

If you leave Carthago alone, it will be fully built-up with culture as soon as you can say "blink". Probably not getting a wonder due to lack of a natural Aqueduct, but still dangerous to your borders. Why would you want to force yourself to keep a bigger garrison in Sicily, than just enough to repel invasions (i.e. 1 unit on each coastal tile)?

Take a look at the Democracy game and see what was going on with islands the AI had to actually ship units to. If you capture Carhage, it will be a royal pain to keep it at Demigod or higher. Yes, it can be done, but you can be getting a lot more cities from the Celts and much easier.

Originally posted by Solomwi
Keeping the army empty?

No, I would actually make the Army and go kill the Celts right away. Here, Jon and I happen to disagree.

Originally posted by Solomwi
On trading? I already acknowledged that may be a level difference, in that there may be enough fewer turns in between the AI getting techs to make it worthwhile to wait.

If you play it high enough, you will get few shots at selling a tech at all. So if you do, better use it to full dvantage. Cash is plenty in this scenario (short tech tree, even shorter useful tech tree, meaning you go to 0% research in no time), so much so that a couple hundred are nothing compared to any useful tech. Since you have luxuries and resources easily available, techs seem the only thing really worth a trade. The only exception is when you know others will sell the tech next turn if you do not.

[Aeson]

You don't need the Army to kill the Celts.

They are pushovers even on high difficulty. I'm playing Deity and I just took 2 of their cities with 5 Legion I's (all ones I started with), made peace for 3 more of their cities, spent 30g on an embassy, and for my WM they signed up against Carthage.

Send one of the Citizens you start with to build a city on the Spice after you take Massilia.

----------

Another thing about high difficulty. If you hold off on Mathmatics, you will have to go to war with Persia and/or Greece within the first few turns as they will probably demand it from you. I'm at war with Persia, though it's not really a big deal. I had traded for the Dyes, but the negative WW from their declaration of war covers that happiness just as well. Greece would be a bigger problem.

[Neal the Neophyte]

Having read all the discussions posted to date, I realize how appropriate my handle, "Neal the Neophyte" is. I'm trying to absorb all this, but right now I think I will reserve some quiet time in a dark corner curled up in the fetal position and sucking my thumb.

Some of this discussion is couched in terms that I do not comprehend. In addition, the plethora of abbreviations goes far beyond the list I obtained from another old post.

I'm dedicated to getting competent at this game, but I'm staggered with the knowledge of what I don't know. I shall, nevertheless, study all the responses and ask the necessary questions - so stand by.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Aeson
You don't need the Army to kill the Celts.

True. But it is so much quicker and more devastating if you use one. I prefer overkill if it is so easy to get. And having the Heroic Epic ASAP is pretty useful in this scenario (in any scenario, actually).

Originally posted by Aeson
Another thing about high difficulty. If you hold off on Mathmatics, you will have to go to war with Persia and/or Greece within the first few turns as they will probably demand it from you.

You can make the Macedonians happy with an early alliance against Carthage and/or ROP. Should be good enough to keep them from bugging you. As you noted, the others are no big deal.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Modo44

If you leave Carthago alone, it will be fully built-up with culture as soon as you can say "blink". Probably not getting a wonder due to lack of a natural Aqueduct, but still dangerous to your borders. Why would you want to force yourself to keep a bigger garrison in Sicily, than just enough to repel invasions (i.e. 1 unit on each coastal tile)?

You obviously didn't read my arguments, as I never mentioned either leaving Carthago alone or garrisoning Sicily. I take and keep Carthago within a couple of turns of capturing Marsala, then use Sicily as a waypoint for reinforcements.

Take a look at the Democracy game and see what was going on with islands the AI had to actually ship units to. If you capture Carhage, it will be a royal pain to keep it at Demigod or higher. Yes, it can be done, but you can be getting a lot more cities from the Celts and much easier.

I've looked at the demogame, and the fact that peace can be made with the Carthiginians changes the dynamic a little bit. Those Celtic cities are yours for the taking at any point, yes, even if they have GS running around, and aren't looking to bump you off from the start. Not so Carthage. I prefer not to give Carthage a chance to a) get ivory and start making more NMs, and b) build up their defenses any more than I have to.

No, I would actually make the Army and go kill the Celts right away. Here, Jon and I happen to disagree.

Fair enough. That's not something where my approach is going to change with level, though, which was my point.

If you play it high enough, you will get few shots at selling a tech at all. So if you do, better use it to full dvantage. Cash is plenty in this scenario (short tech tree, even shorter useful tech tree, meaning you go to 0% research in no time), so much so that a couple hundred are nothing compared to any useful tech. Since you have luxuries and resources easily available, techs seem the only thing really worth a trade. The only exception is when you know others will sell the tech next turn if you do not.

The OP is playing it on warlord, so the logic given isn't really applicable, which is why I made the disclaimer along with my original disagreement.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Solomwi
You obviously didn't read my arguments, as I never mentioned either leaving Carthago alone or garrisoning Sicily. I take and keep Carthago within a couple of turns of capturing Marsala, then use Sicily as a waypoint for reinforcements.

I answered to both possibilities of "not razing Carthago" - the one you chose (capturing) and the one others might use (leaving the city alone). Sorry about expanding a bit.

Originally posted by Solomwi
I've looked at the demogame, and the fact that peace can be made with the Carthiginians changes the dynamic a little bit. Those Celtic cities are yours for the taking at any point, yes, even if they have GS running around, and aren't looking to bump you off from the start. Not so Carthage. I prefer not to give Carthage a chance to a) get ivory and start making more NMs, and b) build up their defenses any more than I have to.

The demo game would actually make it more useful to capture Carthago, since you might try to sign peace after that. If you are constantly at war with Carthage, as in the standard conquest, capturing cities in Africa is more dangerous, since you will need to defend them all the way. It is true though, that is is much easier to keep them on lower difficulty levels.

[joncnunn]

The AI isn't particularly bad handeling split into two. It retains the normal practice towards underdefeneded cities, which if your leaving no or few defenders in the middle of their empire means everything converges on Carthago. The AI will attempt to bypass your offensive stacks of Legions, and after about three cities there's a hole for them to sneak in on them

At Monarch level, a stream of reforcements would be needed to defend captured cities so the offensive drives don't grind to a halt, particularly the western one.

Much, much easier to not try to defend cities in Africa and just raize them to the ground until the eastern force hits their eastern most city [keep that one]. On the western army, I usually end up evenually transporting it to help out with Spanish Carthago after raizing a few towns before it reaches the coast.

Then now that the AI is the one in the middle, the eastern force heads back west and captures any replacement Carthigan cities and in the west following Carthago kicked out of Spain, those forces cross the straits and capture towns moving east.

Assuming the difficulty level isn't to high, that eastern most Carthigan city in Africa you captured could be a great city to use to build citizens to expand to the Dye in Libya and then backfill after wiping out the Carthagians.

[On higher difficulty levels, you may be better off settling Cyprus for Dyes]

Originally posted by Solomwi

It's not often I find myself having to defend in cities, though, which, as I said above, is a big reason I like keeping Carthago. Nora is basically an afterthought (send the army or a pair of legions to take care of it easily enough), and once those two are gone, African Carthage is split in two. This really helps the contingent moving east, and they're pretty much able to cut through those three cities like butter.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by joncnunn
The AI isn't particularly bad handeling split into two. It retains the normal practice towards underdefeneded cities, which if your leaving no or few defenders in the middle of their empire means everything converges on Carthago. The AI will attempt to bypass your offensive stacks of Legions, and after about three cities there's a hole for them to sneak in on them

At Monarch level, a stream of reforcements would be needed to defend captured cities so the offensive drives don't grind to a halt, particularly the western one.

Much, much easier to not try to defend cities in Africa and just raize them to the ground until the eastern force hits their eastern most city [keep that one]. On the western army, I usually end up evenually transporting it to help out with Spanish Carthago after raizing a few towns before it reaches the coast.

Then now that the AI is the one in the middle, the eastern force heads back west and captures any replacement Carthigan cities and in the west following Carthago kicked out of Spain, those forces cross the straits and capture towns moving east.

Assuming the difficulty level isn't to high, that eastern most Carthigan city in Africa you captured could be a great city to use to build citizens to expand to the Dye in Libya and then backfill after wiping out the Carthagians.

[On higher difficulty levels, you may be better off settling Cyprus for Dyes]

Taking cities leaves no such hole. As long as Nora stands, they'll try to sneak in via the lower road, but that's easily quashed. After that, the last city you took is a perfectly fine defender for Carthago, simply because you have exclusive control of the road leading there. Avoiding the culture borders means you're probably going to control all of Africa before their attackers even show up around Carthago. I've found they quit even trying to attack in the east pretty quickly. The western advance faces more attackers to pick off, but never anything overwhelming, and certainly not anything that requires defending in cities. You've got the mobility advantage and their attackers are all D:2. They're going to be in rough terrain, but that's where it's nice to have the army along. A galley or two of reinforcements works fine picking them off on their way to catch up to the western advance. In short, I've found that everything only converges on Carthago for the first few turns after you take it, with plenty of advance warning, and the worst damage that gets done is maybe the pillaging of a couple of tiles. After that, the AI simply can't get to it in time due to the culture barrier and my control of the roads. The same goes for Cirta once Icosium is in hand, and so on.

I do the same re: taking the western army to Spain, but only after I've taken Tingis, at which point the only real threat to western Africa is barbs from the Sahara, but only some time after research is finished for a second civ. Also like to use Leptis Magna as you describe. I'm going to try the same gambit on Emperor, and it remains to be seen whether Egypt will beat me to Cyrene or not.

I answered to both possibilities of "not razing Carthago" - the one you chose (capturing) and the one others might use (leaving the city alone). Sorry about expanding a bit.

You answered to capturing at Demigod or above, and then only with a bald assertion. Still, as I said, it's not necessary to defend Carthago for very long at all, maybe an extra turn or so with the additional attackers the AI can muster on DG, and not necessary to defend it at all once you have a city on either side with 100+ culture a) illuminating possible attack routes and b) cutting off Carthaginian use of roads. The culture retention is key here, obviously, and doesn't change with level, to my knowledge.

On those extra attackers, they're still D:2 (with a few NMs at D:3, but not terribly many, and no more on DG than other levels, since Carthage doesn't start with ivory), and the RNG still works the same, so I'm leaning toward the thought that they're actually a good thing (more promotions and potential leaders). Even against NMs on the hills, which is the toughest battle you may have to face around Carthago, a healthy vet LI will win 72% of the time. I like those odds. Against swords, the majority of what I see at that point, the odds go up to 87%. Against WEs, when they start coming, you've got a 39% chance of winning vs. a 21% chance of losing (another time the army comes in very handy, btw) with a vet LI.

The demo game would actually make it more useful to capture Carthago, since you might try to sign peace after that. If you are constantly at war with Carthage, as in the standard conquest, capturing cities in Africa is more dangerous, since you will need to defend them all the way. It is true though, that is is much easier to keep them on lower difficulty levels.

The demogame also removes the immediate impetus to wipe Carthage off the map, that being that as long as you don't, they'll be getting stronger for when you eventually do. Again, you simply don't need to defend them all the way, except for killing attackers before they get there, which is easily done without really slowing up your advance.

Btw, Modo, I've posted something for your commentary in the private forum.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Modo44
True. But it is so much quicker and more devastating if you use one. I prefer overkill if it is so easy to get. And having the Heroic Epic ASAP is pretty useful in this scenario (in any scenario, actually).

With the Legions you get a lot of easy fights for promotions and MGL generation though. The Army can't generate Leaders and will take a lot of the easy fights if used to it's full potential up there.

Plus by sending the Army N you are letting Carthage off the hook. That's where the tougher fights are, and where you want the Army. I like to take the Army (2 Legion I's in it, 1 Legion I out of it to add later) to the islands on turn 2 with some Archers and Garrisons, take the 3 cities with it and Archers, leave the Garrisons and Archers (if any survive, attack with them first to keep the Army moving as fast as possible) to defend the islands, meet up with the Legion I's from the S after they take those 2 cities, and head to Carthage. Done this way Carthago can fall on around turn 12, Celts in the bag (and protecting the W) a few turns previously. It will vary some depending on how much you have to heal up and the difficulty.

The Heroic Epic is available very early either way.

[Solomwi]

Btw, Aeson (and can't believe I'm correcting you, even on something this small ), you can actually get Roma to 45 spt under the GA. And by holding off attacking Syracuse for a turn, you get an extra one turn worker before the GA starts, and of course, an extra turn at the end of it. I tried moving the archer and one legion onto the volcano the first turn, just to keep a merc from taking the high ground, and fortifying the other legion. At the same time, I sent all three units from Croton to Messana, which they can reach on turn two. On turn two, I fortified the archer, brought both legions to the wheat 8 of Syracuse, and manually unloaded the galley from Croton into Messana. This gives the archer a slightly better than 50% chance when attacked by a merc, and starts your GA on turn 3. If the two legions fail to take Syracuse on turn 3 (which I've yet to see), you've got two more behind them to move in, virtually guaranteeing it will fall on turn 4. All the while, Croton's garrison is protecting Messana in case the AI galley at Marsala drops a unit off behind you.

[Aeson]

Delaying the GA is an interesting move. Since all the food boxes start off empty there wouldn't be much of a tradeoff.

I must have been counting the city square as one of the 12 Roma Laborers. I've never actually built Roma up all the way in the GA to build Wonders because I'd rather have units, and 25 or 30spt are most efficient for that unless you can get to a Republic while in your GA.

After Roma is done with Workers I build 1 turn Horsemen to upgrade to HC.