AU208: Total Eternal Forever War - Reports and Comments

[cumi]

...My sad report

I was playing China on Warlord (normally I play Regent)

I had a good start. I got a Settler, 25g and Pottery from 3 barbarian tribe. I buildt 3 barracks in the beginning. Unfortunetly, I met both AI civ on the continent at the same time. I made quite good (for me) deals with them. I got (as I remember) 3 techs from Iraq for 2 techs and xx/gpt . I new, I couldn’t concentrate on the both, so I played the following startegy: I wanted to destroy Rome (they were the nearest) and send some units againts Iraq (just to hold thei MW for a while and play as a “barbarian”.

The war against Rome was not as I planed. I didn’t got ANY GL, but had HUGE cassualties. At the beginning of my aggression on Rome, they had 3 cities (inc. their capital). I captured their capital first, then I attacked their suthern city. This was nightmare!!! I lost about 8 archers (4 veteran) against 2 spearmen (1 elite – that I made for them). Finally I destroyed the city – there war nothing to capture… Next I wanted to be sure about their last city: I made about 2 spearmen and 10 archers and was sending them continously to it’s border, without attacking it. When the army was big enough, I captured the city. Fine. The situation was the following: too few units, too few improvements, too few workers, having quite bad REXing phase behind me.

I am not very optimistic…

So the time to disarm Iraq didn’t came yet. But, I was sure about the existence of ABC weapons (this is a bad joke, I know).

Now (I just finished with Rome) – where I made the following screenshot – I finished the Great Library and got Horsback Riding. England contacted me and the only thing they could give me was World Map + 180 gold for the communication with Iraq. No Techs! Bad… I am finishing my Libraries, Marketplaces and Couthouses (where needed) in most of my cities and preparing a few settlers, swordsmen for the final (I hope so) against Iraq.

[vmxa1]

This is definetly a hard nut to crack and you can see that by the fact that not much is being reported anymore.
So many failures by some of what I think are very strong players, attest to the harshness.
I looked at the screen for all wonders and saw that I was on a track to lose to a UN vote, since I did not have one under construction and no one was goin to vote for me.
I would say that it could be beat by an extreme warmonger. I mean make almost nothing but troops and ships. Get Monarchy quickly.
The game needs to have disabled Diplo and Respawn. It is not fair to allow a vote in a must war game IMO.
This means you have to get the UN and that is unlikely due to the tech swapping advantage. This is maybe not impossible, but very slim chance. If you dropped to the lowest level, maybe you could keep up in tech, since you would have fewer unhappy citizens.
Anyway the real key would be to jump the overseas civs ASAP. You must get the resources in England and you can not wait too long to get a foot hold in at least one other island.
I have had crashes in the past with modified saves and user created scenarios as I did with this one.
I do not think it is a hardware issue as I tried this on two boxes, one XP and the other Win98. Different hardware all around. I have seen it on the other two PC's that I gave to my son and daughter (amd 900 and amd 1900+). So I think it is is something in the maps that causes the failure. I have managed to play some out, so I am not sure what is the cause.
I am reluctant to start again because of this issue, but I am considering a run at the lowest level just to see if it makes any difference at all. The AI is the same, so the impact would be the happiness and the reduction of the AI boosts. These are not the biggest issue in this game. I think the biggest issue is the ability of the AI to trade tech and never have to fight each other.
The two that are on the same island may have an early fight, but soon all are united against you.
If this was one land mass or at least had most of the civs on one mass, it would be easier. Now they are able to be at war with you and not suffer, since you can not send troops everywhere at once. They send only small numbers until they get transports and the tech race is likely lost by then. The few troops they manage to send is not enough to slow them down at all. Only England is in trouble as you can land on them.
Maybe a landing on the two civ island would do the trick. That would let you stop two civs and have a much larger empire. The key would be if that land has all the resources required. You could then deal with two civ that had a much smaller empire. I will have to think about that some.
The one thing about the fast elimination of Rome and Iroqs is the lack of promotion and hence leaders.
It is quite a while before the barbs were able to try to rampage and it was too late to hurt or help me by then.

[nbarclay]

I'm finally finding time to get back to this game, and I'm up to 1120 AD. I've been running at zero research (aside from a few scientists here and there) one turn away from Military Tradition for a few turns, but the AIs haven't managed a heavy enough landing to push me into finishing it before I wanted to. Now, with 93 horsemen available as MPs and for eventual upgrade to cavalry, I'm ready to push the button. (The fact that I'm now 18 units over my free unit support limit has something to do with that, but

My current thinking is that I'll (1) upgrade a few horses immediately for defense and to renew my attack on England, (2) focus cities on financial improvements for a while since I've been neglecting those in favor of science ones, (3) push ahead with science in the meantime since right now, my available city improvements favor that, (4) build up ships, cannons, and riflemen to go with my cavalry, and (5) take my best shot at invading America. Wish me luck.

[vmxa1]

Go get em and good luck.

[nbarclay]

I think I just found another piece of horrible evil Alex inflicted on us. Normally, in an 8-civ game, luxuries are found at a rate of one per civ on each continent. Not only did Alex limit us to two luxuries among four civs in our hemisphere, but he ensured that ample supplies of those two luxuries are available in the other hemisphere! So while our warfare is holding us down to two luxuries, it doesn't limit our main AI opponents' access to luxuries at all!

All in all, Alex loaded the dice against the human players about as much as I've ever seen in an AU game, and he did so in a game where the human players were already at a huge disadvantage just from the special rules. It's no wonder that this game seems so nearly impossible to win.

[nbarclay]

It's 1280 AD and I'm now in the industrial era, with Nationalism as my free tech as usual. I've just mobilized and shifted a lot of my production to building frigates and riflemen. I already have ten caravels I can upgrade to galleons.

I just finished using cavalry to capture all of England's home island, but they have another city just off my coast that I'm betting is their last one. The plan is to use that to break out of mobilization when the time comes.

AI frigates are causing me some headaches, but my cannons are helping a little in keeping them at bay. The AIs have a rather nasty tech lead; the first ones started on Longevity a few turns ago.

[cumi]

cumi's story continued...

...so my current situation is the following:

I contacted everybody, but I couldn’t make any deals. Most probably they already heard about me… I am about 2 techs behind them. I destroyed Iraq and now I am in my building phase. I am trying to complete Smith’s Wonder. If I fail, I will have huge problems. I think this is my last chance to win somehow. I don’t plan to attack England’s land, simply I don’t have enough units and my cities are stil building Banks and Universities. I am trying to catch up in tech-race like this.

BTW, I put my FP in Veii.

Hoping that next AU will be a not-allowed-to-start-a-war game!

[cumi]

Re: cumi's story continued...

Originally posted by cumi
...I don’t plan to attack England’s land...

Ah, yes! Those Galleys! I hate them. I lost every one I built within 2 turns and was not able to destroy ANY of the enemy Galleys.

Any comments on that? Or the chinese people are simply that bad saylors?!?!?!


cumi

[vmxa1]

They should have Junks and be good sailors, but they seemto be poor with a galley.

[vmxa1]

Ok, here is.

[vmxa1]

The numbers:

[vmxa1]

I think that you can win this as it sets by using a setting of Regent or lower. I am not saying it is the only way.
I totally messed up my run on Monarch and knowing the lay of the land, maybe I could do it.
The lower levels offer two things :
1 no extra units at the start
2 more content citizen to start with

What this means it you can rush the two locale civ right away. You will have to devote less workers/resources to prevent unhappiness.
This did show me that I am not an all warmonger. I had to force myself to keep making units and sending them into the fray.
I manage two respites, one when Rome and Iroq all died and onther after Engalnd went out, before I launched an attack on India. ONce that war started, no peace ever again. I was too lazy to get enough workers up on my main land to get it all railed.
I was able to rail England and all the conquered land of Ghandi and Hammy.
I had some tanks at the end, but never got to use them, I should have turned of culture.

[nbarclay]

Add to that the fact that on the lowest levels, the AIs are actually playing with research and production penalties compared with the human player as opposed to the bonuses they get on Monarch and higher.

[nbarclay]

It's 1460 AD now, and my long-delayed invasion of America is underway. Over the last few turns, I've taken four American cities, and for the moment, I'm in pretty good shape. The initial invasion involved riflemen and huge numbers of cannons, but I recently got Replaceable Parts and upgraded to infantry and artillery. I also have a completely insane number of Frigates (and of troops in general) thanks to a long period in mobilization. By the way, this is my first attempt at WWI style combat using the "beat them up with artillery and then walk in" approach. In the past, I've always been too concerned about war weariness and the amount of time such warfare takes. But for some reason, those issues aren't nearly as big a deal in this game.

Building all those horsemen turned out to be a bad idea. Upgrades in Monarchy are too expensive, so about two thirds of them are serving as MPs to the extent that they're doing any good at all, and they're eating up a lot of gold. I'll probably disband most of them for shields in outlying areas once I get out of mobilization in a few turns; they're costing way too much gold that really needs to be going into research.

Egypt, Babylon, and India are all communist now, and America just went into anarchy. I haven't seen any destroyers or battleships yet, so I'm hoping I'll have time to deal with America and then Egypt before tanks and aircraft enter the picture. If I can do that, and if I can catch up in the tech race before the U.N. becomes available, the game should be winnable.

I've been doing lousy in the wonder race since the early medieval era. Babylon has Magellan's, Copernicus's, Shakespeare's, and Universal Suffrage. India has Smith's, which at least means it's not in the hands of the biggest, wealthiest AIs. America beat me to ToE by about four or five turns after switching from Universal Suffrage (I had a leader ready to rush it, but I didn't manage enough investment in research to get the tech in time) and America also has Newton's and Bach's. And Egypt has Longevity. Thanks to ToE, the AIs are now in a race for Hoover, and I'm not inclined to delay Industrialization and the Corporation branch the way I'd have to just to compete for it.

This scenario is definitely winnable on Monarch, at least with the right luck and the right moves. Whether I can beat it myself on my first try remains to be seen.

One last little humorous note: My home continent has just been invaded by England! My infantry wiped out the entire invasion force without injury, all one regular warrior of it. (And a frigate dispatched the galley that carried him with equal ease.)

[Dominae]

Looking good Nathan! Have you blockaded all the American cities with that huge navy?


Dominae