AU501 - DAR6: Endgame

[Dominae]

This is the last DAR thread for AU501: The Power of Seafaring. Use this space to describe the last portion of your game, from Flight onward.

I hope you were all victorious!

[ZargonX]

Ok, here's the short version...

1768 - Operation George W. Bush (Oil Seize) launches
1768 - Thwarted! Netherlands and Sumeria sign MPP
1770 - Atomic Theory to Russia for Dyes WM 2gpt 240g
1776 - Operation GWB refocused against Egypt
1776 - Enter the Modern Age, start UN in Varna
1782 - Declare war on Egypt
1782 - Military Alliance with Russia against Egypt for Steel
1782 - Battlefield Medicine built
1784 - Asyut captured, oil secured, "Glorious" Egyptians destroyed.
1794 - Fission to England for Rocketry
1794 - Fission to Netherlands for spices WM 3gpt 140
1802 - Umma overthrows their oppresors to join us
1804 - Computers to England for Coal WM 205gpt 710g
1804 - Computers to Netherlands for WM 77gpt 390g
1814 - United Nations completed. No elections yet...
1816 - Wall Street complete
1822 - Fission to Maya for WM 108gpt 350g
1824 - Ecology to England for WM 41gpt 1090g
1824 - Ecology to Netherlands for WM 112gpt 260g
1828 - Spy planted in England. We steal Space Flight for 1770g
1834 - English build Manhattan Project
1844 - Apollo Program built
1848 - Netherlands declares war on England. Good for me
1852 - Space Flight to Netherlands for WM 74gpt 280g
1856 - SS Cockpit and Storage/Supply completed
1858 - Space Flight to Maya for WM 44gpt 390g
1862 - SS Docking Bay completed
1862 - SETI Program built
1864 - English build SS Life Support
1868 - SS Engine completed
1868 - Kish overthrows its oppresors to join us
1870 - Superconductor and Satellites to Netherlands for Mini
1870 - Satellites to England for Furs 1174g 75gpt WM
1870 - Declare war on Sumeria, mostly for kicks
1872 - SS Exterior casing complete
1874 - SS Thrusters complete
1878 - English add SS Engine
1886 - English add SS Cockpit
1886 - Advance Russia enough to give them Fission
1886 - Gems Incense Computers Amphib War to Russia for Uranium
1892 - I have destroyed the "Strong" Sumerians
1896 - Fuel Cells completed
1912 - Emergency Anti-England ICBMs completed
1922 - Uranium appears on my southern island
1924 - SS Party Lounge completed
1928 - Synth Fibers to England for Furs Coal Genetics Recycling
1928 - Synth Fibers to Netherlands for WM 113gpt 3120g
1934 - Space Race Victory! 10hrs, 42mins, 18sec 2257 points

[cracky]

The Dutch: island people of commerce or radioactive mutants?

1630: Radio done. Got computers for free. Most core cities are out of useful improvements to build so several tank task forces are being assembled for counter attacks should one of the others get aggressive. The same goes for my perimeter fleets of battleships.

1670: Well whaddya know. The only aluminum in my territory is on the last little island in the south. Meanwhile the Dutch are only behind by computers and rocketry.

1690: Tee Hee Hee. The Dutch declare war on England. Hope this slows down the tech race (they’re only a tech and a half behind now.)

1700: The English city on the mini-island with rubber culture flips to me. OUCH! Tech parity with the Dutch all of a sudden. Hopefully my pre-build for the Internet helps with this (and all the scientists I just created on my useless islands).

1725: World War has broken out. England and France are taking on the Mayans, Dutch, Egyptians, and Russians. The Egyptians and Russians don’t really matter much, they don’t have tanks or transports yet, but the rest should be good. This war will continue unabated to the end of the game. After 100 years of fighting most of those civs had changed sides more than once, though the one constant was England vs. the Dutch.

Come on Dutch, switch to military production! Nobody cares what that glowing green rock that kills people is.

1730: I must say, I like the modern look of the Mayan. Those earrings make Smoke-Jaguar take on a late-90’s tech bubble CEO look. Oh, and the Dutch get to Fission two turns before me and start the UN. Screw SETI, next turn I’m switching to UN.

1745: No Uranium. Huh. 5 Uranium in the game. None in territory conquered by me. The Internet switched to the UN with one turn to go. Do I go for the vote? Do I go for the vote with no tech give aways? No, don’t dare. Looks like it’s a space race for me then.

1754: The Dutch begin The Manhattan project, of which the mighty Byzantines know nothing. Perhaps this Internet thing being built in Constantinople will shed some light on it. Argh! Cracky just realized the SS Fuel Cells and Stasis Chamber require Uranium. Sorry Egypt, it’s nothing personal. I’m going to wait for modern armor even though it’s two techs away. I can work on the rest of the ship first I guess…

1778: much time between turns now. I’m going to invade the northern source of Uranium on the Egypt/Russia continent, hopefully without actually “attacking” anything. I’m going to declare war, plunk down a settler and 11 mech. Inf. ON the Uranium and build a city. Of course with Egypt at war with EVERYONE, it helps diminish the counter-attack. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that their best unit is Infantry.

Wow, just checked on the Dutch again. They’re down Space Flight and Mini, but have 8400 in the bank, and are at war with Egypt and England. What’s up with all that cash?


1804: Someone (has to be the Dutch) sabotage my SS Exterior Casing! They will be receiving many nukes before I take off.

1814: I have 5 SS parts done with 3 turns left on satelites before switching to robotics, when the Dutch pull a sneak attack on my formerly Sumerian cities. I switch that continent to military production and fly in some tanks from the homeland

1816: The very next turn, the U.N. vote pops up again. This time I go for it, banking on the Netherlands' constantly shifting alliances and 100 years of war to get me the votes.

Diplomatic Victory Score: 3168. Time: 15 hours, 34 minutes, and 24 seconds (left the game running one afternoon while I went to class, oops).

[nbarclay]

Emperor Level, AU Mod

In 1305 AD, the Byzantines launched the assault to capture the last Sumerian city (which, if you'll recall, was needed for its oil). The war lasted two turns because there weren't quite enough fast-movers available to end it in one. As the war ended in 1310, the Byzantines entered the modern era and got Fission as a free tech. Uranium proved to be a second resource that the Dutch had and we didn't.

As the year 1320 rolled around, I decided to sell and give the French the last four mandatory medieval techs and Nationalism to help them fend off the Mayas. Yes, the Mayas were my allies against the Dutch, but that didn't mean I was ready to consent to their engaging in aggression of their own. Too much French land had shifted to Mayan hands already. By that point, the Mayas and Russia were in Communism fighting their respective wars against the civs sharing their home continents.

I'd been playing catch-up with Russia in culture ever since the early game, and I finally pulled ahead in 1325. Russia continued its war with Egypt and completed its conquest in 1355. At that point, I had destroyed three of the ten civs that started the game and Russia had eliminaed a fourth.

In 1400 AD, my destroyer captains and bomber pilots started having fun sinking the latest, state-of-the-art ships in the Dutch Navy: frigates and galleons. More importantly, Byzantine TOW Infantry and artillery landed outside the Dutch rubber city of Groningen, which fell the following turn. The Internet was completed in Sumer, giving a nice boost to research. (Not surprisingly, once rubber was available, tanks and MechInfs displaced TOW Infantry in the Byzantine production queues.)

The conquest of the Dutch continent ended in 1440 AD, leaving Aluminum as the only resource the Byzantines lacked. Fortunately, the Dutch were equipped to provide one-stop shopping: their city of Holwerd just to the north of their home continent had aluminum sitting right outside. Since the Dutch refused to surrender the city peacefully, tanks and MechInfs (including a MechInf army) with artillery and destroyer support moved in and seized the city in 1450. With the needed resources acquired, the Byzantines decided that further warfare would be pointless and signed a peace treaty with the Dutch.

In the year 1460, a Scientific Great Leader emerged with the discovery of The Laser. (With how many techs I'd been first to research, he was about due, maybe even a little overdue.) That should have put me on a fairly easy four-turn research pace for the rest of the game, but I ran into a bug. Research costs kept going up as I researched Robotics, and a science slider setting that was supposed to complete the discovery of Robotics in four turns (after a couple adjustments upward during the course of research) left me needing the slider at 20% on a fifth. The same bug bit on the next tech, so with the last two techs I needed for the space race, I set the science slider for some fairly serious overkill on the last turn of my research. Overall, there were three modern techs that I legitimately needed five turns to research and two more that took a fifth turn because of the bug. The rest could be completed in four (albeit in one case only by setting a bunch of cities to build Wealth before the SGL showed up). But the AIs researched quickly enough that I missed my dream of finishing literally a full era ahead by about three techs. There was one other research oddity in the game: no one got around to researching Military Tradition until the game was practically over. Thus, I never did build a Military Academy. Nor, for that matter, did I ever get around to building the United Nations. I'm not sure I've ever won a space race victory without building that along the way before.

In 1545 AD, the volcano on my home land mass finally got around to erupting for the first time in the game. I was pretty lucky in that respect.

The game ended in the year 1555 when our illustrious empress led a select group to a new world orbiting Alpha Centauri. The planet Earth was beginning to bore her, so she needed a new challenge.

The screenshot below shows my Dutch acquisitions as they appeared at the end of the game.

[nbarclay]

One note about the Dutch war: it proved my suspicions that a ZOC for TOW Infantry could spell big trouble for AIs correct. When I moved some artillery protected by TOW Infantry toward Amsterdam to help take the city, instead of attacking that stack, the Dutch moved around the stack to try to hit Groningen. They acted completely oblivious to the implications of the TOW Infantry's ZOC, so several Dutch units ended up injured. I seriously doubt that any advantages the AI gets out of a ZOC for guerillas and TOW Infantry even come close to making up for the way human players can take advantage of a ZOC against the AI (often without even trying).

[ZargonX]

Oh, I'd also like to point out that this:

1828 - Spy planted in England. We steal Space Flight for 1770g

is probably one of the first time espionage has actually done me some critical good.

[jshelr]

We have a large tech lead and got another SGL at Fusion. There was aluminum under a city on a mall island of Russia's in the far SW (edit) that was guarded by nearly nothing. We just took that and will build MAs for awhile before doing some more prospecting for needed materials and supplies. The AI is very warlike in this game.

[jshelr]

The final stage of this game was, IMO, much more interesting than most. The reasons were the low level of shields in our core cities that made military buildups slower than usual and the lack of reliable strategic resources.

Our endgame considerations began with the thought that uranium and oil can disappear quickly. So, we needed a backup for each. The backup could take the form of actual possession or the power to get it quickly

We resolved to do invasions led by marines in direct assaults on coastal cities and using settlers to extend the blitz as far as possible on one turn. This method is lots of fun and also can avoid or minimize nuke responses. It is only nukes that really remain as a material risk. If we get entangled in a nuke exchange, perhaps a third civ free of such damage could become the tech leader, particularly since the core cities are small and vulnerable.

On hitting synthetic fibers, we stopped research for a turn to upgrade to MA. Good thing too, since we were shortly deprived of oil when the resource ran out and of rubber when the Dutch no longer offered it, perhaps due to a loss in their wars. On the upside, the English had a culture extension of their eastern city to capture one tile on Maya island. That tile had uranium. This was perfect for a settler to directly capture the tile and we set sail with a one-transport team and a couple of cover boats. Simultaneously, we headed SW with a one-transport team to a mountain island where the Dutch had oil.

We were at war with Russia who had sucked in England with an MPP. So, we made peace with Russia and traded them for rubber, amphibious war, dyes, 240 gold – giving them fusion. They are the second on tech but behind by 4 at this point. Building marines until resources available for MA again.

We were worried about the Maya reaction to grabbing tiles currently in their area, and we made a RoP before capturing the English tile. The same turn we took the Dutch oil island and used a battleship and transport to build a temple (or library?) in one turn. We then made peace with the English and set about building some more resources for an invasion of the main Dutch island to secure reliable rubber and a backup uranium.

There will probably be several more twists and turns before the finish. But the tech lead looks to be a winning edge at this point.

Interestingly, we’ve simply stayed a republic for the whole game. Unit costs were kept low for awhile, but now they are affordable. If the AI had not been so warlike, we probably would have had to go to democracy and would have been more vulnerable.

[Catt]

I received Ecology as my free tech and researched Fission in 8 turns. I planned to take a diplo victory if available, otherwise an SS victory. I like to play with the self-imposed rule that I must allow a vote if called and I was a bit worried about my chances. The only competitor would be the Dutch (I knew thanks to the new victory status screen ) and the Dutch were engaged in some limited warfare, with alliances as I entered the Modern Age. My palace pre-build meant that the UN followed the completion of Fission by 6 or 7 turns, and in the intervening time the Dutch made peace with all – and also enjoyed RoPs with many, a deal I had not made all game.

In 1435 AD, with 6 turns to go on a 7-turn pace on Computers, Free Artistry was discovered by someone.

The first UN vote came in 1460 AD, and I was both pleasantly surprised and a bit miffed at the same time. I originally traded for gems from Sumeria for gpt in the ancient age. I continued trading for Sumerian gems by trading my sole supply of horses during the early middle ages. By the late middle ages I was trading old techs for Sumerian gems. I enjoyed an uninterrupted trade for Sumerian gems (and a polite or gracious Gilgamesh) for virtually the entire game. At the end of the industrial age (for me), I couldn’t renew my gem trade because the Sumerians had had a gems tile pillaged by the Mayans – before Gilgamesh could reconnect his surplus supply, he was bribed into a trade embargo against me by the Hittites (against whom I had been at “war” since the early middle ages) – I have no definitive idea what the Hittites offered since they were slightly behind the Sumerians in the tech race.

So, with that as the backdrop, I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of support for William and the support for me, and I was miffed that Gilgamesh, against whom I had never warred, and with whom I had always traded, abstained. With 9 surviving civs, I secured 4 votes (needed 5 for the win), but William only received 2 votes.

I built Seti and proceeded on to Miniaturization with a decent pre-build for the Internet (denial more than anything). When the trade embargo by the Sumerians lapsed, I checked in and found that Gilgamesh had some gold available (which he hadn’t had before). I sold him horses for a lump sum and a map – probably a bit cheaply, but not a “bribe” trade, I don’t think – I took a few hundred gold off of him.

The second UN vote came in 1515 AD. The renewed trade deal with Gilgamesh was enough to move him from neutrality – I won with 5 votes to William’s 2 votes. At that point it was a foregone conclusion in any event – I had 4 or 5 modern age techs to William’s none (maybe 1). I had more cash than I knew what to do with, and so could rush buy offshore platforms and research labs in all cities that deserved one. I had a large stack of bombers and a small tank force that I could use to take a uranium supply if I couldn’t trade for it – in fact one was looking quite inviting sitting on the tip of the Mayan lands but falling within England’s culture border – I could build a city on the tile and have a source of uranium without firing a shot (I always had rubber via trade, and also had a native source of aluminum). I was tempted to play out a space race just to see how the AIs performed in the modern age, but decided to end it with the UN (I could have abstained from the vote myself and probably prevented a victory for as long as I wanted). Maybe I’ll replay the end to a SS victory if the American super bowl turns into a boring blowout early.

As I mentioned a couple of times – haven’t had much time to play or to concentrate on an informative and entertaining DAR, but I will have what I hope are interesting details and questions for the post-game thread.

Catt

[:) Smiley]

used a battleship and transport to build a temple (or library?) in one turn

Now that's got to be one rather interesting temple/library.

[jshelr]

Finished in "only" 35 hours. The game informs me that Byz was the largest civ, biggest GDP, but uncultured in the extreme. Typical American job, I guess.

The game moved quickly at the end because we had a 4 tech lead and #2 Russia lost it's uranium in a flip to the Dutch island we had just taken over -- the one with the funny looking library build out of the battleship.

[lockstep]

AAR, part 6 (the last one)

As the course of events - unexpectedly - became a little intensive, I don't have tech research dates for this AAR. The tech sequence was Fission - Miniaturization - Genetics - Rocketry - Amhibious War - Advanced Flight - (whatever the modern tech tree has in store, I don't care). Needless to say, there was no aluminium and no uranium within my borders.

1695 AD: Constantinople finshes United Nations

Vote? Who said there would be a vote?

1705 AD: Sumeria invades homeland (3 units)
1710 AD: I demand withdrawal, Sumeria declares war; all Sumerian units killed; next invasion wave (4 units) (-> defeated)
1715 AD: Mayas declare war; Russia declares war

I guess the AI's are jealous, after all. Time to enlist some allies.

1720 AD: Alliance with Hittites against Sumeria for ivory; alliance with France against Mayas for Comm; alliance with Dutch against Russia for ScM; Corp to Dutch for 54gpt, 30g; England declares war
1725 AD: Third Sumerian invasion wave (-> defeated)
1750 AD: Constantinople finishes Internet
1752 AD: Dutch declare war

Jealousy, bribe or the inability to maintain the gpt deal? Anyhow, in the end it was England who became a real nuisance.

1754 AD: England invades western island (4 cavalry) (-> rush some TOW infantry)
1756 AD: England razes Erech; Sumeria invades far western island (-> defeated by 3-knight-army)
1758 AD: Mayas want peace, AmW, Comb for peace, I decline; Sumeria wants peace, MPr for peace, I decline; second English invasion wave (4 cavalry); Scientific Great Leader
1760 AD: England razes Septum; Dutch invade (former) Japanese island (-> defeated);
1762 AD: Surviving English cavalry on western island killed
1766 AD: Erech (re-)founded; Septum (re-)founded
1768 AD: 'Our military plans have been stolen'
1770 AD: Hittites declare war; England invades far western island (-> defeated)
1772 AD: Constantinople finishes Cure for Cancer
1774 AD: Constantinople rushes SETI Program

By now, war weariness became an issue, and I didn't know if the 6 AI's were able to pull off a serious invasion of my homeland, so I swallowed my pride.

1778 AD: Peace, Comb to Russia for peace, 278g; peace, Comb to Dutch for peace, 22g; peace to Mayas for peace, 21g; peace to Sumeria for peace, 140g; peace to England for peace, 38g; 12-tech-lead
1784 AD: Peace to Hittites for peace, 20g

Massive coastal bombardment had convinced the Hittites that war wasn't such a splendid idea. Too bad for them that Sumeria took advantage of the situation and invaded. Meanwhile, the glorious Byzantines won the day.

1824 AD: Constantinople finishes Pentagon
1838 AD: Scientific Great Leader
1840 AD: Fiss to Russia for saltpeter, 251gpt, 1680g; Fiss to Sumeria for Gems, 331gpt, 820g; Fiss to Mayas for 55gpt, 40g; Fiss to England for 53gpt, 30g; 183gpt to Russia for uranium; Constantinople rushes Manhattan Project
1842 AD: Constantinople has 119 culture pt
1856 AD: 20k cultural victory in Constantinople, score 2686


A screenshot of 1838 AD, when I get my third SGL:

[lockstep]

And the 'top 5 cities' in 1856 AD:

[ducki]

My first Emperor win

I already posted a lot of babble in the post-game thread, but there never was a UN vote(Russia built UN) so I just built the spaceship. Ignore the time played - I leave my computer running and Civ on most of the time when I have a game going.

Toward the end, Russia was the KAI after I'd bombarded a huge swath of Maya, Sumeria never got coal, so their production/growth stayed at pre-Industrial levels, and the Dutch's war with Maya lasted two and a half ages, IIRC.

Russia stayed surprisingly comptetitive and if I hadn't had 4 very strong cities, production-wise, they might have given me a race for the launch, but as it was, I beat them by 5 or 6 parts.

I just have to post the announcement screen since it's my first Emp. win.

[jshelr]

Lots of gold in the bank!