AU210 - UN Peacekeepers DAR 3 – Able to build forbidden palace

[Theseus]

The number of AI troops crossing my territory has been insane.

This game is waaaay high on the STCOMOM (tm-Arrian).

So far I am the only civ to have been at peace the entire game. Everything's been pretty balanced thus far, although the Mongols' ability to handle the dogpile was amazing.

I am hoping to build up a strong enough infrastructure to be able to handle home defense against just about anything (slowmovers), and also be able to project power anywhere needed (fastmovers). The trick there will be to get all that in place by the time any AI civs are truly in danger... Spain and India would have been, if not for the Mongol dogpile.

I was falling behind on tech (no extortion ), but got to Banking first... whew!

It's very absorbing and one-more-turnish.

The only problem is that I turned on all of the friend/enemy animations because the battles on my territory are so amusing (everything from Warriors and Archers up through the Feud units and the Chivalry units... the fastmover UUs: MWs, Keshiks, Samurai, WEs... haven't seen any Sipahi yet), and it's sloooow.

How much does this SUCK??!! I can't attack since I'm being the good guy / future UN dude:

[Theseus]

For instance, look at the Mongol stack just above the minimap... the assorted 12 donuts box: Pikes, MedInf, and Longbow.

That's been happening throughout, in all the assorted civ flavors.

And, yes:
*Those are walls and forts all over the place.
*I am fully garrisoned due to wandering AI units.
*Muskets... which I hate, but I am living in *dread* of an AI betrayal.
*3-RCP at the core results is ridiculously tight (an experiment I will probably not repeat).

[Theseus]

How great is this... Kolhapur WILL BE MINE!!

[conmcb25]

Posted for replies

[Cort Haus]

Block 3 Report
Monarch, AU Mod

The screenie is from the turn after the FP was triggered - after 18 cities. This seems high - is it an AU Mod thing?

I've never had this many cities by 750BC, doubtless a function of those two freebies, but perhaps assisted by a policy of SEX (Slow Expansion). Once the initial five or six cities were up, more granaries were built in some cities, and barracks in others, to give vet spears to the settlers. Nothing happened for ages, and it looked like my early city lead was disappearing then woosh! Cities splurged out into the landscape, trying this unstoppable RCP machine that everyone's doing - in 4-7-11 rings. The 7 was dictated by the advance tribe and the 11 by the hills spot between the incense and horses. Getting 2 shields from my fourteenth city is kinda novel, as are the wierd 'binary cities' I ended up with.

Expansionsism has not only been kind in, er, expansion, but in tech too. Polythesism and Literature from huts. By the end of the block I had a lead of Literature over all but Japan and Rome. Maybe I should deal some freebies to keep them balanced, but tech backwaters can be good luxury suppliers. I was promiscuous with flogging contacts for peanuts, so that'll speed up the slowbies.

Republic comes in 13 turns, with +52gpt and 1558 in the kitty. Should be some good rushing when republic comes round .

Iron is about to be hooked up for 10 reg warrior upgrades - no particular use intended, just MP and general readiness. 4 archers support the vet spears (total 14) in the outer cities. 13 workers, 2 settlers.

RoPs in place with everyone except the Mongols - I was fed up with their loitering.

The others are fairly even in size and power, so pruning the Mongols (tempting though their horse-iron west wing is) may just destabilize things, and I don't usually start wars, so why now? There's a whole stack of bad-ass civs over there, so there's no point weakening one.

I'm worried about the Iroqs strong culture, so there's lots of temple building going on in my cities now, but it's very tempting to switch some to libraries instead.

I also wish Spain and India would put on more of a show - I'm a bit worried about Germany long-term. In fact looking at the vast tracts of land everywhere there should be quite a few powerful civs coming down the pipe.

[Cort Haus]

Block 3
Some Dates


1450 Code of Laws. Iroqs have Philosophy and Polythesim. Could get Polytheism for CoL if I paid 100g, or Phil +70g. Take Phil and start on Republic at 40 turns.

1375 San Francisco founded. (distance 7)

1325 Miami founded. (distance 7)


1150 Houston Founded (distance 7)

1075 St Louis founded (distance 7)
Polytheism from a hut. And death next turn. (worth it)

1050 Detroit founded on hille betwen horses and incense
Mongols have Construction, and want the moon for it (CoL, Phil, Poly + 500g)

1025 Get Construction from Babs for CoL, Poly, 10g

1000 Literature from hut.

975 New Orleans founded (distance 4)
Baltimore founded (distance 7)
Denver founded by Iron (distance 7)

950 Cincinati founded (distance 7)
That's 7 cities at distance 4, 8 at distance 7 and 1 at 11 (+ capital) = 17 cities - but still no FP option. How many are needed in this game?
Everyone (nearly) has Mapmaking, but I still have to pay 100g with Polytheism, so I trade Construction for it
Hiawatha threatens for Literature. No way.

900 Babs build Oracle. They're gonna have some culture ...

850 I have just Literature over everyone except the backward Japanese and Romans.
1349g +46gpt, Republic in 17 turns

775 Dallas founded (distance 11). Border now touches Mongols
Finally allowed to build FP (18 cities)

[vmxa1]

Yes it is the AU:

Action: Increased optimal number of cities for all map sizes by 50%
Reduced percentage of optimal cities for all levels by 1/3
Reason: To make the AI more aggressive in pursuing land
Comment: Is transparent to the human player, except for the fact that
in delays the availability of the FP. Encourages the larger AI
empires to capture (not raze) cities. May induce the AI to win
by domination. The behavior of the AI in expanding was not
changed after Firaxis made courthouses and police stations
increase the OCN by 25% each.

[Cort Haus]

It also reduces corruption for the human player, I presume. So it might be that as well as the RCP benefits that are making me see less corruption.

[vmxa1]

I attached the readme:

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
It also reduces corruption for the human player, I presume. So it might be that as well as the RCP benefits that are making me see less corruption.

No, it's not supposed to affect Corruption. The only noticeable effect in your empire should be the increase in number of cities to build the Forbidden Palace.

I think you may just be noticing the dramatic effects of RCP with multiple rings (which a Large Pangea map is more conducive to compared to a smaller Continents map).


Dominae

[Dominae]

Well, this DAR is going to look slightly different from the rest of you, because I actually ran out of land to expand into, and so could not build my Forbidden Palace until my campaign against the Mongols! The Deity AI is, ah, pretty strong at REX. For those of you who do not the specifics, the AI starts with a free Settler at Deity, meaning that it typically has two cities up and running within the first 6-8 turns of the game. This means that you really have to struggle to get every inch of land you want within your borders.

I therefore felt that to have a competitely productive empire I would need to do some warmongering. And, given the rules of this course, I knew that this would have to take place within the Ancient age, which means Swordsmen. As described in the previous DAR thread, I reasoned that the Mongols were the best targets, as they had good lands and conquering them meant that I would only have eastern and western borders to defend (although these would still be rather large). The only problem was that the AI was researching so fast that I would barely have enough Swordsmen ready to raid the Mongols and enter the Medieval era more or less at the same time as everyone else; in other words, I would need to "hold myself back" in the Ancient era by not researching some required tech.

The plan therefore was to expand as quickly as possible to get a lot of land peacefully (RCP rings at 4, 8 and 11), all the while building Warriors for an eventual offensive against the Mongols. This plan worked rather well due largely to my purchase of foreign Workers; by the time it was time to attack the Mongols, I had acquired ~25 slaves on the international slave market, for ~120 Gold apiece (at that stage of the game I only had around 8 native Workers!). If you're counting, this cost me around 3k Gold, which was actually more around 2k because many trades involved techs. Although I could have used that money for upgrades later on, I did not feel this was necessary for two reasons: 1) I knew I would only need about 30 Swordsmen to take care of the Mongols, which costs only 1200 Gold in upgrades, 2) with all the expansion I was doing I was actually Shield-constrained and not Gold-constrained. I suppose I could have put the Gold "in the bank" for the much-later Cavalry upgrade phase, but I guess I simply could not keep my greedy hands off those slaves (which, for some reason, were ubiquitous in the trade screen). It's not at all obvious to figure out if this was the best play, but it worked for me here, so at least it was a "good" play.

In ~1100BC the Babylonians and the Romans enter the Medieval age, which causes a Barb uprising of 30! Horsemen (that's an exclamation point, not a factorial) to appear right inside an area relatively close to my core that I had not expanded into yet (because I knew the AIs would not steal it from me). My defenses are not so "paper thin" in this game: I have ~15 Warriors, 4 Horsemen and 4 Archers on hand. However, it would simply be annoying to lose Warriors destined to be Swordsmen to stupid Barbs (remember that I was Shield-constrained not Gold-constrained, so that 10-Shield Warriors were actually very precious).

Below is a screenshot of the "action". A few things to notice:

1. The Indians, through their super-cheap Temples and rapid expansion, have denied me Incense at Buffalo (at least I got the Horses!).

2. Boston, Seattle, New York and Chicago are my "breakbasket" cities. Each (IIRC) has a Granary and is producing nothing but Workers/Settlers (I'll come back to this later, but Seattle and Boston in particular produced nothing but a Granary then Workers throughout my entire game so far, and it's now ~500AD and the beginning of the Industrial era!).

3. The Worker on the Cattle is luring a Barb Horsemen away from their main stack and into the open. This is expensive since I originally bought that Worker for over 100 Gold, but it's not so bad when you consider that I would lose ~50 Gold if the Horsemen ransacked one of my cities, and that my military units are far more important that Gold (I've mentioned this twice already!).

4. The stack just below the Barb stacks is Horsemen and Archers. I feel I have good odds of winning since the Barbs have to cross and River and will fall under AU mod Archer fire, but nonetheless I think this is the right play (to sacrifice Horsemen) because my Warriors will be more important in the short-term.

In all, I think I lost 3 slave Workers, 2 Horsemen and 2 Archers in the Barb uprising (remember, that's against 25 Barb Horsemen).

[Dominae]

Fast-forward and handful of turns to 975BC, and most of the AI civs are also in the Medieval era, save the Mongols, Spanish and Indians.

This is where I make the first big mistake of the game: with only Currency and Philosophy as required techs in the Medieval era, I trade for Currency in order to make a little profit by selling it to Indian and Spain (not Mongolia because Swordsmen versus Pikemen is not fun). As you may have spotted, I've effectively denied myself The Republic until after I deal with the Mongols; I cannot trade for Philosophy without entering the Medieval era, and I cannot declare war on Mongolia without provocation if I advance (due to the @$% rules of this scenario!). The net effect is that the AI civ's tech advantage will be further magnified in the Medieval era due to the fact that I will be switching governments much later. I reject the idea of going for Monarchy, because: 1) it's an expensive tech, 2) no one has researched it yet, and 3) I do not plan to be doing enough warfare in the near-future to justify and additional period of Anarchy.

Below is a screenshot of my loss of Horses to superior Indian Culture (Buffalo was not originally an Indian city). I feel a heavy dose of fear here, as I'm surrounded by Religious civs (save the Mongols) which are expanding faster than I am and are pushing my borders back with Culture. Also visible in the screenshot is the rout of the Barb Horsemen, and the intricate dance required to deal with them as painlessly as possible (for instance, the use of the Settler as a lure instead of founding a city right away).

[Rhothaerill]

Originally posted by Dominae
(due to the @$% rules of this scenario!)

Glad to see you're having fun with the game Dom. Can't wait to see the rest of your game.

Originally posted by Dominae
I had acquired ~25 slaves on the international slave market

I wonder if this will be further modified in Conquests? I don't know if you've read my Immortal Storm DAR yet, but I made good use of the same tactic in BCV. It's something the human player can exploit, but the AI has no chance of doing the same.

[Dominae]

Between 975BC and 750BC, I try to draw up a list of things to cheer me up with respect to this game, but all I can come up with is:

1. I'm stuck in the Ancient era, and will only transition a full 10-20 turns after the AI civs.
2. I'm stuck in Despotism until the Mongols are gone.
3. I've no source Horses.
4. I've no Culture to speak of, and the Indians, Iroquois and Babylonians are rapidly stealing tiles from my border cities.
5. I can no longer expand (still cannot build the FP).
6. I'll probably not have enough troops to decimate the uber-militaristic Mongols.
7. America is not a Scientific civ.

As you can imagine, efforts to cheer myself up do not work.

In order to risk not falling too far behind, I decide to attack the Mongols a little earlier than planned. The following forces available:

22 Swordsmen
4 Horsemen
2 Archers
2 Spearmen
2 Scout!!

The plan is to hit as many Mongol borders towns as realistically possible in one turn, and hope that their counter-attack is weak (sweet plan, eh?). Just to cover my butt, I sign a Military Alliance with India against the Mongols for my World Map and 108 Gold. My next target is the Indians for various reasons (namely my loss of Incense to their stupid Culture), and so having them lose units to the Mongols beforehand makes sense.

But wait a minute! A quick check at the Military Advisor screen informs me that I'm Average in military relative to all the major world powers (Germans, Romans and Japanese), and Strong relative to everyone else, including the Mongols! Hope, how missed thee!

Below is a screenshot of the turn I declare war on the Mongols and move my stacks within their territory. I have stacks ready to hit Kazan, Ulanbaatar, Almarikh and Choybalsan next turn (the first three are visible in the screenshot). Notice that the Mongols do not have Feudalism yet!

[Dominae]

And below is a screenshot of the following turn, after a successful attack on each the four targets listed in the previous attack. The Mongol counter-attack was pitiful (something like a Swordsman, two Horsemen and a handful of Archers)! I thought the Mongols were supposed to be crazy war fanatics like the Zulu!

Upon conquering these four cities, I was able to begin construction of the Forbidden Palace. I'm not going to stop my DAR here, however, as I feel that the end of the Mongol war is a far more logical end to this block in my game. Not to worry, the Mongols fell pretty fast, so this thread should remain coherent (except for Theseus' posts: you still could not build the FP in 500AD?!?).