AU208: Total Eternal Forever War - Reports and Comments

[Catt]

With the discovery of the wider world, Bismarck raced for Education and universities, and finished off the Romans, and took all of the Iroquois cities remaining on the home continent. Hiawatha had establshed a city on a one-tile island off the western German coast, as well as 2 small settlements on desolate islands. Without an opporuntity to destroy Hiawatha before marines, Bismarck didn't bother with the other offshore colonies. German production focused on science -- universities were rapidly constructed in the hopes of bringing Germany up to the world standard in knowledge. To little avail. After researching through Astronomy, German scientists dropped back to begin the "southern research." The overseas powers, undisturbed by any warfare amongst themselves, all operating as Democracies, raced ahead of Germany. By the time Germany was focused on Gunpowder, the overseas civs had made giant strides forward.

Germany was just a bit behind the eightball.

[Catt]

With the overseas civs into the Industrial Age, swarms of frigates and then ironclads bombarded German coastlines. Landing parties landed, but were pretty quickly destroyed. Nonetheless, the destruction of so many roads crippled German commerce. Research slowed, and the constant need for reinforcement units meant that cities were unable to build many happiness improvements. German cities above size 10 routinely had an entertainer, even with the use of the luxury slider. The wartime production requirements demanded a constant stream of units, and those units needed to be deployed at strategic locations. Military police were not doing their job as they were marching towards landing parties and or fortified in strategic defensive positions.

German research was stalling out. With the discovery that no saltpeter was available - meaning no cannons, muskets, or cavalry - things looked bleak. Bismarck had hoped that the fatherland could survive intact into the Industrial Age and get to artillery when the tide of battle would turn, but the relentless bombardment and landing parties were sapping the strength from the German volk. A landing of American infantry spelt trouble. German knights picked off the wounded, and Geman pikes in walled cities defended valiantly, but soon the dam broke. Over the course of several turns, four German cities fell to invaders. Salamance would fall soon, and the German FP city soon after. With each turn a long series of bombardments and battles, Bismarck drifted off from engagement, and began to write the German history.

Catt

[vmxa1]

Another excellent report, even though your fate was sealed without key resources.

[Catt]

Additional game thoughts:

I made some key mistakes:

1. I was less aggressive than I should have been with military road networks. For fear of losing worker parties to raids, my workers stayed several tiles back from the front -- slow-moving attackers slowed even further as they approached their objectives.

2. I didn't pop-rush much - not out of conscious decision but out of laziness and a disinterest in MM during gameplay (which comes and goes for me). Pop-rushing could have strengthened my forces quite considerably early.

3. I was overconfident about my research / building abilities and didn't beeline for the GL. When I decided to go after it, it was too late.

4. With the homeland foes deprived of their key strategic resources, I should have immediately turned my attention to England. I decided to fight a "lazy war" for some time and take England when I got caravels rather than making a galley invasion.

I experienced some good luck and some bad luck. But the incident that had the greatest impact was the disastrous assault on Rome early on. Not only did I fail to take Rome, but virtually my entire standing offensive army was destroyed. I felt confident that a force of 8 archers would be sufficient for Rome, but was flabbergasted to fail, and fail badly (in addition to a wounded spearman, there was still at least one full-health warrior defending Rome). It was a very bad RNG result -- but one that was certainly foresseable. Although I would probably do the same thing anew in a similar situation (believing I assembled sufficient forces), the risk is there and risk has a way of biting back when it seems most inconvenient. That failed assault cost me the game (not that the game would be in great shape had the mission succeeded - but the failure set back the control of my continent by over 1000 years) and doomed me to a tech backwardness from which I couldn't recover.

Catt

[Catt]

Everyone has acknowledged that this scenario was very hard - but why was it hard?

1. The start. Rome with iron on a hill (and fairly close) Salamanca with horses on a hill; human civ with no resources in forests. Sure that's an obvious one - but just one factor among many.

2. Lack of rivers. With no rivers at the start, and very few river tiles at all on the home continent, the human tech effort was severely challenged. Without the luxury of extra river-commerce, and constrained to the commerce-challenged governments, scientific research was meager.

3. Lack of luxuries. Only two luxuries - one of which was a long ways off and then subject to bombardment / raiding parties, happiness was a looming pressure.

4. Lack of strategic resources. Iron and horses were available fairly early with conquest. I guess we all used a lot of archers . But the lack of saltpeter was a killer. Without saltpeter, the player was limited to Knights and Pikes until Nationalism, and no bombard (except for cats - not much use against cities (7+) with pikes). Furthermore, no offensive naval units - either for coastal defense or transport protection - is available until Industrialization, and then only if you've taken England at that point. Any failure to take England early turned out to be a large strategic mistake. Looking at the home continent in the editor after the game, it's clear that we also lacked coal, rubber, oil, aluminum, and uranium. In other words, overseas conquest was a must -- but more importantly, overseas conquest early was a must.

5. "Semi-isolated" AI's. The overseas AI's enjoyed large homelands that were for the most part isolated but at the same time not isolated -- early contact (tech trading and devaluation) was available, but the chance for any destructive AI-AI wars to slow them down was minimal at best. I haven't formally retired to see the replay, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that not one AI civ declared war against another. I didn't see any Babylonian or Indian cities that had obviously changed hands - the most likely possible AI war. With the overseas AIs chugging peacefully through Republic and Democracy, the tech race was bound to be a serious challenge even to a game played "Aeson-ly."

@alexman - I think you were a bit unfair with the set-up -- not because it was challenging per se, but because the player, not knowing of the unusual resource changes made to the map, was deprived of the ability to make certain strategic decisions and play out the choices with alternate approaches / strategies remaining available. With a landmass the size of our home continent, I think we could reasonably expect a more representative sample of available resources. Choosing to wait for the discovery of key enabling techs to facilitate an action could prove fatal -- but only when the unusual distribution became known.

While one should certainly be prepared for unpleasant surprises, depriving the home continent of all resources after iron sets up a "strategic death spiral" whereby each turn that the player delays an overseas invasion puts the player further at a disadvantage. Waiting for muskets for a musket/knight assault? A mistake. Researching north towards Education and therefore not learning of the lack of saltpeter for some time? A mistake. Instead beelining for a cavalry rush (and bypassing Chivalry)? Less of a mistake, but still problematic depending on how you prepared for the cav rush. With no saltpeter, deciding to wait for infantry/artillery for the all-out assault? Compounding the mistake. With no access to a navy except for lightly-defended transports, any delay in securing England hurts. Sufficient delay may prove to be fatal.

Such resource deprivation is challenging in a "normal" game; but such resource deprivation in a game in which all trade is foreclosed means that an early-game decision based upon reasonable expectations can prove fatal instead of just disruptive. While the lack of saltpeter might be more expected (few desert but lots of hills), the lack of rubber (all those forests!) is too much (not that it mattered in my game ). So, delay until Gunpowder to go after England is bad but not the end. Any delay beyond the discovery of a lack of saltpeter is probably fatal in a good number of circumstances.

Catt

[De Gaulle]

Double post...

[De Gaulle]

In praise of Alexman...

First of all, many thanks to Alexman for setting up this scenario!

Many people have "complained" a little bit about this map but it's obvious he put a lot of thought and effort into it, and this should be acknowledged. Even if we got our butts whiped!

He obviously envisionned that Total War meant that we had to be "really" (=proactively & offensively) fighting. And yes, that means shipping troops across a 3-tile (perfect for galleys...) sea lane to invade England ASAP.
It is true that our land mass could be expected to have almost all later ressources but it would have made the game far too easy. The average player would have used saltpeter to make muskets and cannons to repel attacks, a few (highly mobile) cavs to kill off landing units and to generate leaders and a few fregates to safely take out "bombed out" foreign fregates and ironclads. With coal, we would have made railroading and factory a priority and we could have withstood invasions very easily while massively outproducing the AIs, even in monarchy. With rubber and the use of combined infantry/artillery stacks to claim luxuries and deny resources/luxuries to the AI, the game would have been a foregone conclusion....

In fact, if we had had these ressources this game would have been very similar to our regular SP games: secure enough land in the ancient age, build up and catch up in tech during the medieval period and use superior production and tactics to roll over the AIs in the industrial era...

I am guessing Alexman envisionned all this and decided to ensure the game would still be truly competitive in the modern age. As Catt mentionned, failing to meet certain "deadlines" ensured a "strategic death spiral" and a restart...

Mind you, I have never looked at my own results with such disgust or screamed at the monitor so much after loosing "vital" after "vital" battle or GW race... AAR to follow...
I took severe beatings and I am now playing my 3rd game but I am truly learning from this AU class and it has the feel of of one these great CivII scenarios...
Good job Alexman!

[Rhothaerill]

Even though I’m getting in on this at the back of the pack I decided to add my two cents worth too. I’ve never played an AU course before, and had reservations about starting this one because of what I’d heard about it. But I was up for a challenge since Monarch was starting to get too easy. I thought for a while about who to play and eventually decided to pick the Mongols. With the militaristic trait I could start an early archer rush, and with expansionist trait I could REX quickly enough to create a few productive cities and perhaps find a few techs in huts before the inevitable death of my scout. Or so I thought….

And so the glorious empire of Temujin “The Short Lived” was born. I began the game on Monarch level, with all non-PTW victory conditions active and with AI respawns turned off (as always since I hate it when they do that). Knowing that I had a scout to explore the realm and pop huts I decided to begin work on a granary to speed my perceived future growth. I decided to chop one of the fur forests around my city for a quick shield fix and later irrigation, though I was irritated with my worker’s lack of motivation in chopping quickly. I soon popped a city out of one hut to the NW, but that was the extent of the advantage the expansionistic trait provided me in this game. By the time I had five cities, both Rome and the Iroquois had contacted me, and war immediately followed. I was soon fighting a losing battle on two fronts with multiple mounted warriors and Roman legions throwing themselves at me. Before declaring war on the Romans I was able to extort Iron Working out of them (for Masonry) and discovered Iron in the mountains north of me. Knowing that a city wouldn’t be able to reach it I decided that the only way I’d be able to turn the tide of my losses would be to send several slooowwww workers to form a colony and road back to my capital. After a few Roman pillagers destroyed some road tiles I set up some more defense along my road. I was finally able to connect everything together and immediately upgraded all my warriors standing around to swordsman. Now I had a force to be reckoned with. I immediately sent a force of six heading north to cause fits to the Romans. And then my setback happened. Like the Romans and Iroquois, the RNG turned on me and I lost my whole swordsman force to archers, a legion and two warriors! At that point I saw the writing on the wall. All I had left were a few spearmen and two swordsman in my cities and not much chance of regaining my swordsman force anytime soon enough to save me. Mounted Warriors and Roman Legions were on the horizon. Bye bye Temujin.

I decided to try and figure out WHY I lost so badly and so quickly, never mind the RNG turning against me. And it hit me, I wasn’t aggressive enough to start the game. Instead of trying to figure out WHO to play I should have been concentrating on HOW to play this scenario. I was the Mongols and instead of taking the war to the enemy I hunkered down to create a production base. But by the time the production base was up and running, all it could create were defensive units to protect itself. My one chance to take the war to the enemies turf turned out badly, but it was too little too late anyway. My enemies were sending four to five units per turn at me and I could barely keep up defensively. As a further note, the amount of time it took my workers to connect up the iron in the mountains also doomed me. Industrious is perhaps a must for this scenario. I decided to try again as a different Civ. The Mongols with expansionist weren’t really suited well because there aren’t many huts to pop. And beginning with passive expansion ultimately doomed me. My first thought for a new game was to play China as it has the industrious trait I needed, combined with the military for an early archer rush. But I’ve played China too much lately and was a bit tired of seeing Mao at the top of the foreign adviser screen. Looking at the choices available to me I finally settled on those nice little Persians with their Immortals that I’d only heard about and never used. The Persians have the industrious trait, but they also devote their time to science, which I could see was a potential problem with my Mongol game. And they have those Immortals! Finally I decided to move down to Regent level since I did so poorly with my first AU try on Monarch.

More to follow as I continue with my second game…this time with more commentary and screenshots.

[vmxa1]

IMO you must take out Rome ASAP, you can not afford to let them get Legions out of the capitol. You can handle them later as they will be seriously hampered by the lost of Rome and the Iron.

[Rhothaerill]

The Fall of Rome

Edit: Storyline will be written normally. All game related comments will be in italics.

Dateline: 4,000 B.C.
Location: An out of the way forest that marks the beginnings of a continent spanning empire.

Our fearless leader Xerxes is somewhat psychic. He has been in contact with a man named Temujin from an alternate world. Knowing the fate of poor Temujin, Xerxes is determined to correct the mistakes made by Temujin and to lead his people to greatness. We are Persian, we will conquer!

Looking around our little forest we see that many beavers have made their homes in the forests surrounding us, our people were happy since they’d have furs to wear in the coming cold years (PETA hadn’t been invented yet ). The land was dry. Once perhaps rivers flowed from the great inland lake next to us, but they were long gone, perhaps casualties of the many beavers. This looks like a passably good place to begin our world domination. The great city of Persepolis is built and the first inklings of a warrior code begin to form in our minds. Knowing that a strong military will be necessary in our dreams of conquest, we begin working on a barracks to train our future army. Aided by the speed of our workforce a forest is soon chopped down to provide raw materials for the barracks. Great Xerxes knows how to motivate his people.

In communion with lost Temujin to the very end, Xerxes realizes that he must pursue different tactics. He must seek out and harass his neighbors as Temujin failed to accomplish. Realizing that Temujin’s world is much the same as his own Xerxes sends two fledgling warriors to the northeast and the expected Roman Empire. To the northwest, he sends but one lone warrior before beginning to train new recruits with the defensive capabilities of spears. One of the warriors heading northeast finds a settlement of barbarians who promptly attack him (ungrateful morons who do not understand the power of the Persians!). But he is a hardy warrior and survives with nary a scratch. Continuing their quest northward these two warriors discover that the advice of Xerxes friend Temujin is indeed correct. They discover the Romans and their ugly leader Caesar. Caesar already appears to understand the warrior code we have almost completed, but he also knows something he calls the alphabet, a system of symbols with which the words we write are created. Caesar agrees to teach us this alphabet and in return we teach him our masonry building skills and intend to give him gold in tribute over the next several centuries. But there is an evil glimmer in Caesar’s eye as he agrees to this. Fearing he plans treachery, our stout warriors immediately declare war on Caesar. Thus begins our conquest!

Moving closer to Rome, we discover to our surprise that while Caesar knows the defensive capabilities of spears, he has neglected to defend his city with them. Our original intent as mandated by Xerxes was to travel his lands and harass his production until we put the finishing touches on our warrior code and could train our units with a bow. But alas one of our battle-hungry warriors did not quite listen and attacked Rome itself. About to write him off as a loss and try to control our people better, we were surprised to see him redouble his efforts at the last moment and hold on for a victory. And what a victory it was.



This win essentially changed my tactics. I was prepared to surround Rome and pillage and burn his improvements. Finding Rome defended only by one warrior was a stroke of sheer luck and nothing more. As I’d been researching Warrior Code for the archers I quickly switched gears from preparing for the downfall of the Romans to preparing the downfall of the Iroquois. I sent my elite warrior that you see in the picture toward Salamanca and quickly started building a small archer force.

More to come later...

[Rhothaerill]

Immortals Unite

Our lordship Xerxes has investigated our battle hero of the war with the Romans to discover why he did not heed our call to avoid attacking Rome. It was discovered that our messenger never reached him and he took it upon himself to teach the Romans the Persian way. As a reward for his bravery he was given the command for defense of Rome.

Looking forward to our planned conquest of these "Iroquois", whom we only know from Xerxes telepathic contact with Temujin, we complete our warrior code and begin training our warriors in the use of bows. This should only help us in our conquest. Meanwhile we have begun work on a secret weapon, one that should turn the tide of any war we fight. In Rome we have discovered small deposits of something called iron. Our scholars tell us that they must test this iron but they believe they can work it into weapons of war for our armies.

Game note: I only sent a few archers toward the Iroquois, this time for harassment only. After calling them up and gaining pottery and ceremonial burial, war was declared (naturally) and I set about leading the Iroquois units on merry chases around their lands to buy myself time to create more units and begin my expansion. With only two cities to my name, and the Iroquois expansion mostly stilled, I decided that the time was now to begin expanding my empire a bit, starting with a granary in Persepolis, before Immortals hit. I'm experimenting more and more lately with a tighter city placement of city-tile-tile-city (with sometimes a third tile in there) and began to place my cities accordingly. Around this time I finished researching Iron Working, completed a road network to Rome, and began a war road to Salamanca.

The scholars of the great Persian Empire do us credit. They were indeed correct about being able to work this Roman iron. A full cache of iron ore was discovered under Rome and our efforts to teach our armies the bow has slackened. We are now teaching them to use Persian scimitars created from our new iron. With these scimitars our armies will be truly unstoppable. They will be immortal! Naturally our first new Immortal was our brave warrior from Rome. He is fearless and nothing will stand in his way.

Game note: Before starting Iron Working I thought about holding off on that for awhile to gain more warriors to immediately upgrade to Immortals. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that I needed to attack the Iroquois as soon as possible. If they were allowed to gain a build-up of forces and take out my harassment team then it would start to my Mongol game all over again. So I upgraded only a couple warriors (all vets) and built two more before sending them up my "almost there" war road to Salamanca.

Our newly coined Immortal forces have indeed proven their worth for grand Persia. Though one of our new forces proved mortal, our quest to teach these Iroquois a lesson in true military might ended with our former brave warrior who captured Rome for us. He is truly a credit to us and will live long in the annals of the Persians as the conqueror of two capitol cities. On the stong backs of our Immortal Storm we have entered our Golden Age, a truly impressive feat.

Game Note: As you can see Salamanca was captured with only a very weak Niagara Falls left. Most of the Iroquois field units were destroyed so all that was left was mopping up. I did enter my GA, but I knew that I would most likely have a despotic GA when I chose the Persians. It wasn't all bad as it allowed me to create more units and sped my path toward Literature. I was surprised at how fast my research was going until I remembered I had moved down a notch to Regent level. But I still figured I would need the GL as I had no idea how the other AI civs were doing so far. I also popped mathematics from a hut which allowed me to start the Pyramids in Persepolis. I wasn't at all sure I would get it, but it would at least be a good pre-build for the GL as I was not far away from Literature.

More to come later...

[Dominae]

Welcome Rhothaerill! Nice reports, by the way; I'm awaiting the tale of your eventual demise (yup, the scenarios is that tough!). Just kidding, I hope you win the darn thing.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

Just a quick update on my game: I'm now up to 1750 AD and just completed the United Nations. Egypt beat me to the necessary tech by at least ten turns, but I had a leader ready - and I captured the city Cleo had working on the wonder just as a little extra insurance.

My invasion of Egypt was interesting. The first few turns of it went wonderfully. Then Egypt got Motorized Transportation while I was still researching Electronics (although I'd already gotten Mass Production), and it was really touch-and-go for a while. At their high point, Egypt recaptured two of the four or five cities I'd taken from them, although they didn't get much of my artillery in the process (and I think I got it all back recapturing my lost territory). If the stupid AI hadn't researched Amphibious Warfare ahead of Motorized Transportation, I would have been in real trouble.

But then I got Motorized Transportation and the tide turned back in my favor. I now own at least almost half of Egypt's home continent, including Thebes (a major turning point since it has Longevity and Hoover) and am in a position to pick off the rest at a rate of a city every two turns or so. Even if Egypt gets Computers and upgrades to MechInfs, enough artillery and enough tanks can deal with that. And when I get MechInfs, I can use more of my artillery offensively instead of leaving a few in each city to protect my infantry against Egyptian tanks.

Egypt is still first in the tech race, with them having Nuclear Power and me not. (Another big AI mistake going for that instead of Computers or Ecology/Synthetic Fibers when they were fighting for their lives.) They also have about a zillion optional techs that I don't (as do the other AIs). But I was second to Fission, putting me in second place in mandatory techs.

I've run into one other piece of (presumed) AI stupidity worth noting. Egypt has had over 8000 gold in the bank for a long time now, and the gold I get capturing their cities does nice things for my research pace. I'm almost positive Egypt isn't cranking the researh slider all the way up even though they clearly ought to be.

Nathan

[Rhothaerill]

Originally posted by Dominae
Welcome Rhothaerill! Nice reports, by the way; I'm awaiting the tale of your eventual demise (yup, the scenarios is that tough!). Just kidding, I hope you win the darn thing.

Thanks Dominae. I seem to be doing okay so far, though I've made a few mistakes (one that could really hurt), but that will be shown in another AAR/DAR installment. I hope to have the next one written up by Monday or Tuesday. Real life happened this weekend (Father's Day spent with my wife's father in the morning and mine in the afternoon ).

[nbarclay]

1770 AD. Egypt is dead.