AU501 - DAR3: Contact with all other civs

[Arrian]

I haven't read any DARs yet. I did, however, just glance at Alexman's. THIRTY FOUR DROMON?!?!?

Holy naval power, Batman!

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Thriller
Warpstorm’s watercolours, which I think are really cool!

Yes, it should be the standard tileset. Or maybe they'll hire Warpstorm for Civ4?

I’ve now arrived at DAR3 at 680AD after finally contacting the English by buying communication with them from another civ (is that cheating Dom?)

Assuming you have Printing Press, that's fine.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Hmm, must not read this thread yet. I apparently have more civs still to meet than I knew about (I figured the Maya from their completion of the Pyramids, but I saw England and France on MS's F4 screen).

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Arrian
I haven't read any DARs yet. I did, however, just glance at Alexman's. THIRTY FOUR DROMON?!?!?

Holy naval power, Batman!

-Arrian

plus 18 trebs and almost no offensive units ... I haven't read that DAR but I look forward to it.

I also look forward to reading your revenge against Japan, Arrian. You're not the only one to have met rather a lot of green units. Catt met them too, and possibly NYE. Me, I got jumped by a swarm of TMC's in Hittite-land. My Japanese nightmare, though, was Edo flipping taking 300s of units with it.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Mountain Sage
... Now that we have a foothold on the eastern continent, we will go for the Hittites. Serves them well. Another PP game ruined. AND they blew up our GA.

Is there such a thing as PP in Conquests? I gave up Peace-Play in C3C after the third attempt.

:nostalgia for the PTW pure builder days:

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


plus 18 trebs and almost no offensive units ... I haven't read that DAR but I look forward to it.

I also look forward to reading your revenge against Japan, Arrian. You're not the only one to have met rather a lot of green units. Catt met them too, and possibly NYE. Me, I got jumped by a swarm of TMC's in Hittite-land. My Japanese nightmare, though, was Edo flipping taking 300s of units with it.

I forgot one other thing about invading a small island civ:

Concentration of force. Normally, the AI is atrocious at this. But when their island is that small, pretty much their entire military can hit your landing force. Which is what happened to me. 3 pikemen weren't NEARLY enough. I also admit to having a grand total of 1 bombard unit. Oopsie.

I was running almost zero military for so long I just never built them. I had 1 barracks town (2 game) that provided spears to cover my cities. Until I completed Zeus, I had no offensive units (unless you count a couple of leftover regular warriors) in the homeland (I poprushed a regular archer offshore, but lost him attacking a spearman in a fit of "damnit, I'm due to WIN a battle!" madness).

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Catt

I decided to leave the Japanese alone for the near term. I figure they'll be so backwards that I can take them at any time,

Sorry Catt, but from what transpired here , the above quote is somewhat instructive, from a learning perspective

[Catt]

Originally posted by Cort Haus

Originally posted by Catt
I decided to leave the Japanese alone for the near term. I figure they'll be so backwards that I can take them at any time

Sorry Catt, but from what transpired here , the above quote is somewhat instructive, from a learning perspective

It is most definitely instructive -- my attacking force was slaughtered, and would have been completely routed had they not fled to the safety of dromons. Hubris, tragic hubris . I think it was a combination of (1) many years of "war" and (2) AI "large map" build priorities versus my more typical standard map game (lots more units per city on large maps). Backwardness does invite conquest, but it would have taken a heck of a lot more backwardness (on the part of the Japanese) and a heck of a lot more shield investment (on my part) to make it a walk-over .

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Is there such a thing as PP in Conquests? I gave up Peace-Play in C3C after the third attempt.

:nostalgia for the PTW pure builder days:

I know you don't particularly care for the bug that has altered strategic resource distribution in C3C, but I've played perhaps a dozen full epic games in C3C and several of them have been PP games -- I'd submit that my game here in AU 501 qualifies as a PP game in that I never went a'conquering for resources, and I played another game at Demi-God as the Germans and never once went to war (that one was pre-1.15 and I never built an FP either) despite a lack of resources. I think Firaxis recognizes the resource distribution as a bug and will fix it, but I don't think it has unduly prevented peaceful play as is.

Catt

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by Dominae

Assuming you have Printing Press, that's fine.
Dominae

Strange - I went back to check my 680AD save, and no I didn't have PP by then (I'd actually forgotten which tech was required for communications, so thanks for the reminder).

The funny thing is though, I had still met all 9 AI civs and my Curragh at the top of the world quite clearly hadn't found England, and I'm pretty sure she didn't bump into a British vessel at any time in her travels.

This does not make sense - how could I have met England then? Hmmm, that's what you get for writing your DAR's from memory after the fact. I'm getting old!

I'll attach the save in case you've got time to have look and solve the mystery.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Thriller
The funny thing is though, I had still met all 9 AI civs and my Curragh at the top of the world quite clearly hadn't found England, and I'm pretty sure she didn't bump into a British vessel at any time in her travels.

This does not make sense - how could I have met England then?

Something like this happened to me. England appeared on the F4 long before I found them. I reckon one of their ships saw one of ours on their turn. With the Dutch and the English having a similar orange on my monitor, I wouldn't have noticed.

[Arrian]

Screenshots, finally...

800bc:

[Arrian]

360AD:

[Master Zen]

DAR 3 - AU Mod / Demigod

Well, unfortunately I have had almost no time to play this. I have no clue when I can post the next DAR since I won't have much time this weekend either. Anyway, i'll get around to it eventually


Exploration

During this period I obtained contact with every other civilization. The first thing I did was send my first dromon, the HMS Conqueror to explore one of the "sea protuberances" which appeared along the island to my northwest. Taking advantage of the Byzantine's reduced sinking rate (as well as crossing both my hands and toe fingers) my dromon was sent on a mission which was difficult but not impossible, to seek new empires across the sea (plus, knowing Dominae, that sea lane HAD to lead somewhere...)

Eventually (and perhaps miraculously) our dromon arrived at unfamiliar shores in the year 750 BC. Here to greet us were the powerful Mayans. We settled on a trade by which we provided them with Horseback Riding and they gave us Code of Laws plus the nice sum of 123 gold. The Conqueror then sailed west and in 690 BC found the English. No trades were possible at this time unfortunately.

After looping around the British Isle my dromon came upon the rather backwards French. They were also at war with the Mayans and with very little to fight with. However, it seems they managed to hold their own with no substancial territorial loss. By 350 BC the Conqueror reached the Netherlands. Their leader, Willian, was very coridal and an important trade was set up by which we gave them Feudalism in return for The Republic, 20g, and 63gpt.


The Southern Hemisphere

Current policy was to trade trade and trade. In 610 BC, we discovered Currency. It was immediately traded to Russia in exchange for Construction and 186g. Other trades on this very year was Monarchy for Map Making and Literature with Japan. With the Russian trade I made it to the Medieval Age and got Feudalism for free!!! The best thing was that this was in line with my most pressing foreign policy objective of the moment:

WAR (ok, not yet)

Target: Japan. A major buildup began with warriors being upgraded for Swordsmen and later MI's. A lot of pikes were also being built. Key to Byzantine military strength was a strong fleet. Dromons began being built in our shipyards to prepare to transport our mighty army against Japan. The Order of Battle of the Byzantine Emprie was on 350 BC:

10 - Warriors
2 - Archers
2 - Horsemen
7 - Pikemen
11 - Medieval Infantry
8 - Dromons

Priority would be more pikes and a couple of more MI upgrades before the invasion would be launched.

Building

By this time 11 cities had been founded on the home island, a 12th city was set to built shortly. Most cities had been building a mix of improvements and military units. Three of my crappy coastal cities were pure Dromon pumps, with Caesarea used as a military pump mostly. Constantinople, the capital was switched between settler/worker/units.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Byzantines during this period was the construction of the Great Lighthouse in Nicaea in 450 BC. This gave our fleet a massive advantage of being able to move 5 turns. Our Dromons, already the most powerful naval unit in the game, coupled with this speed boost, are now the rulers of the seas.

[Aeson]

After the debacle that my first Japanese invasion turned out to be, I made peace with the Japanese. I started focusing on claiming the two NW islands, which I had successfully blocked off from all the other civs so far. My Dromon blockades only required 4 ships to keep everyone to the East from meeting the Japanese or getting to those islands.

After quickly pumping out about 10 Settlers, I started thinking about hitting Japan again. I got Feudalism as my free tech, and then researched Republic. Sumeria had also gotten Feudalism as their free tech.

I had sent a Curagh to try and cross at the NW sea, but it had sunk on the second turn. It was able to spot the Mayan borders though. A second and third attempt to cross with Dromons both failed, and so I gave up on that.

The Russians had demanded something from me earlier on, about the same time as my first war with the Japanese. I had refused (they didn't even have Map Making at the time) and signed Egypt up as my ally. I figured I'd make peace with the Russians just as soon as I saw any of their boats, but they never came. The Russians took out the Egyptians after about 40 turns, but are far behind in the tech race now. All this time with free negative war weariness is great too.

I built my fleet up to 11 Dromons, and my army with enough Pikes and Med Inf to filll them. Took along a couple Archers for the 0 range bombard too. So I landed 22 units on a free Mountain just south of the Japanese river. Hoped this was enough to at least hold the Mountain. My initial target was going to be Kyoto, if I could break through their masses of troops. On the turn I landed, the Japanese hit my stack with about 25 units, mostly Archers. They had 8 Ancient Cavalry, and those killed off 2 of my Pikes, but only 3 of their AC survived. The Archers only killed 1 Pike, but my entire stack was very low on HP's, and the Japanese had at least 20 more Archers that had moved into position to attack the next turn.

So I loaded everything back up on the boats, and took my units back home.

[Aeson]

After two turns, all my units were healed up, and I loaded them (along with some reinforcements) back onto the Dromons. Landed at the same place as before.

This time, without most of their AC, my stack held up much better. Just a few attacks in, one of my Pikes killed 2 Archers without losing any HP's. Then the Japanese just stopped attacking altogether. They had around 20 Archers nearby, but I guess they view 6 defense and 5 HP's as impossible.

Knowing this, I left a small force there to keep the Japanese attention, and then loaded up the rest to sail around to the other side of the island and assault Osaka. My units left behind were going to try to draw all the Japanese units to the S of the river, giving me at least one turn to hit Osaka before it could be counterattacked.