Babylon and On - Spoilers and Strategy

[Velociryx]

Sorry for the confusion, DeepO....a holdover from the days of regularly playing Starfleet Battles...BB is the SFB designation for a BattleShip...but I must admit, I liked reading my post better with your interpretation...lol!

-=Vel=-

PS: Best guess...prolly some 200 MA's lost in all....YOW!~

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Velociryx
4 BB's and 4 trannies.

The word 'trannies' is rather open to alternative interpretations too.

Combined arms Brigitte Bardot and Transexual attacks on the enemy Civs?



Is this part of your new strategic thinking, mate?

[Nakar Gabab]

Just a sweet transvestite from transexual Babylonia, as it were?

How has naval combat wound up playing out here? Was it a major force, or just an inconvenience? It's kind of a watery map, so I'd figure you'd NEED it... but the way the AI is about poor sea management, I suppose it could wind up being a letdown.

[DeepO]

Alexman, I can't find anything either. It seems a bug, this shouldn't happen. You might want to send that save to Firaxis...

Vel, 200 MAs seems to be reasonable for the territory you gained. But still, aren't the massive losses what makes you think that you could have trouble finishing before 2050? Wouldn't combined arms, for instance with radars, be worth the extra effort?

Aeson, thanks for trying that tech path, trading refining first. I will surely do it like that, putting 1 scientist on radio from turn one. Maybe this means that discovering radio is going to be the bottleneck for entering the modern age again, but if so I'll use the time to build up my treasury...

It's interesting to see you disbanded the riflemen, I was playing with the idea myself. Maybe it will be beneficial, but I'm not sure about the effects in the long term. I kept most of my riflemen to provide some happiness bonusses when I started the war and changed govs. I didn't want to build MI for the homefront, as you can be more or less sure no AI will launch a big invasion on your island. Do you intend on leaving these cities undefended, apart from a mobile defense force? Or do you want to build modern defenders for all cities once you have the spare production?

I stroke bit of luck today: I caught a cold (yeah, I know, not really a logical thing to have in this summery weather) But for once I don't mind: what can a man do when he is not allowed to leave the house? Right. Fire up the engines, Hammurabi, here I come

DeepO

[jshelr]

Third World Country Does Zero Extra

Sizing up Babylon's plight, I took a bridge players' approach and assumed factors beyond my control would turn our favorably. If anyone attacked, we would be toast. So, Babylon forgot building a defense and concentrated on the economy and tech. There was no other way to even think about winning. Strangely, everything did go right.

„« Set research to zero
„« Traded spices for refining, steel, combustion
„« Traded oil for mass production and atomic theory
„« Upgraded riflemen and then traded the only rubber for electronics and two other techs that I can't decipher in my notes. (The second thing that goes as you age is your handwriting.)
„« With the only rubber out on loan, Babylon turned to building a blue water fleet and adding city improvements, except no universities since there was going to be no research.
„« Artillery defense strategy was initiated by putting the capital build queue enitrely on artillery. (Really, there was no defense strategy except hoping they would leave me alone for awhile)

Being Lucky Is Better Than Being Good

All the other civs started a huge war with each other. The left hand side of the trading wheel was at war with the right hand side (including Joan on the right). Nothing could have been better for Babylon's chances.

In 1650, traded an oil to Russia for flight and radio. This kicked Babs into the modern era, so we also got rocketry. Had one aluminum and traded that away immediately for more tech. It was too soon to use the aluminum.

No uranium. Intend to buy our way to modern armor and bypass nukes entirely.

Population was growing. So, traded for two lux.

First hospital in 1700.

When rubber came back, started a round of tanks and then resold zero-extra rubber for nuclear power.

GDP is still only 481 in 1740.

In 1762, we're building transports, bombers, artillery, and battleships.

Eureka! Uranium is discovered -- a new source -- in 1768. Traded for space travel and satellites. (The small land area was rich in lux and strategic resources.)

By 1774, Modern Armor and nukes are being built. Babs passes Russia on the score page.

With a round of nukes started, traded zero-extra uranium to France for gold used to buy laser.

GDP 638 in 1788.

By 1832, covered mountains and hills on the coasts with defensive units to block invasion to "safe haven" tiles.

1818 -- more uranium is discovered!!

1820 -- America temporarily takes a city on Chinese mainland. (Triggers a meeting of my general staff.)

1848 -- invade China. Goes smoothly. Japan has also taken a Chinese city. We overrun all the cities in four turns. Japan then demands "furs." We politely sign off. They declare war.

Bribe America, India, France, and Germany (all cheaply!) to declare war on Japan. Japan never darkens Babylon's door. We take this opportunity to capture Japan's "Chinese" city. They have a MA army inside and one heroic Babylon MA nearly takes it out single handed. Second MA finishes the job.

By 1862, conquest of China has been completed with temples being built everywhere. More culture buildings to follow. Bonehead move with leader used to build a nuke.

Babylon has the top GDP in 1876. We're still in democracy they've been at war forever.

We acquire all the remaining techs, having extorted some old, bypassed ones from China, and build out manufacturing plants and nuclear power where possible. Next we tool up to invade either India or America.

Frankly, the leadership was getting tired at this point and lost focus on the art of war. Poor decision to invade America because it was what we wanted -- not what was easily available. Quickly capture the lux city on the south end. But then attack neighboring city with too few MA, getting turned back by 4 artillery and MI stack. Abe attacks with a few MA. (Best AI defense I've seen.) Bogged down. Need to import some bombers and radar arty.

Probably should have targeted India. Abe has a reasonably modern defense.

It looks very likely that the game will end with Bab the largest civ. It look less likely that we can reach that stage soon enough to win. It will be fun to try. Starting well into the game like this has been a good idea and the setup was cleverly done. (Thanks to Vel. There was some fresh water on the Southeast end. I always use governors to manage moods and so was a bit steamed when disorder appeared on the second turn.)

[DeepO]

This looks like a succesful combined arms approach as well, together with some good planning. I surely hope that by tonight I also have some good results to post.

A few questions:

• do you have an idea how many MAs it took to conquer China in 4 turns?
• Could anyone explain to me how you can trade away a rubber that you don't have in reserve? There were lots of times I wanted to do something like this, but I'm missing something, I can't select it during negotations.
• Did you use those nukes? or were they just a deterrant?

Spending a leader on a nuke seems to be a very strange decision. I can imagine you don't need a palace swing, but an army is always a very welcome thing...

DeepO

[jshelr]

_________________________________________
This looks like a succesful combined arms approach as well, together with some good planning. I surely hope that by tonight I also have some good results to post.

A few questions:

do you have an idea how many MAs it took to conquer China in 4 turns?

Could anyone explain to me how you can trade away a rubber that you don't have in reserve? There were lots of times I wanted to do something like this, but I'm missing something, I can't select it during negotations.

Did you use those nukes? or were they just a deterrant?

Spending a leader on a nuke seems to be a very strange decision. I can imagine you don't need a palace swing, but an army is always a very welcome thing...
__________________________________________

China had been at war with both America and Japan. They were a bit depleted. As I recall, there were 8 transports with MA, MI, a settler, because sometimes you just want to build instead of using Aeson's recycling blitz, and 8 arty. So, probably 50 MA. An even larger stack did much worse against the better prepared American homeland later.

You can trade your only resource by clicking on it and asking what they will give you for it. I think this is how it's done. If that doesn't work, play around a bit, because you definitely can select the resource somehow. There is a recent thread on "the meaning of zero extra."

I try not to use nukes. Moral problems, etc. Anyway, if you do use nukes, be prepared to have everyone declare war on you immediately. When the fleet embarked for China, there were just three turns left on the missle defense small wonder. Babylon is too small to survive if hit successfully, so I actually waited a while to get close to finishing that wonder.

The palace in China would have been a good idea, no question. Spending a leader on a nuke was stupid. It was not my fault, however. It was USAIR's fault. My 6 pm fllight home on Sunday left at 11.30pm. Sleep deprivation was taking over. If this had been my own game, it was a definite reload. I have no idea what I was thinking.

As for using the leader for an army, I'm pretty much alone on not using armies with MA. I like to move them one at a time, and with stacks as big as they get at this stage, who cares about armies? Answer, everyone else. But I don't really get why??

[DeepO]

jshelr, thanks for the answers. I just tried giving away a resource I had in use, and was much surprised it worked this time! I have tried to do it like that before, but was not able to trade it. I don't know what was wrong.

I'm also morally against nukes, and try not to use them. In the few games I used them, it was a last ditch attempt to not being out-spaceraced by 1 or 2 turns. But lately a space race has never been close on emperor, so no need to nuke the AI.

And in this game, I guess you will be the only one who doesn't like armies full of MA. When fighting infantry you are right that a MA army is not very useful, because some of the MA rarely get used due to a lack of movement points. However, when facing multiple MIs it's a completely different story.

For Berlin, I lost over 50 MAs for 10 MIs, and if I had 10 MA armies I would probably have lost one army at most. The reason is that if you can't get a MI the first turn, you have a chance of it promoting. If you don't get it the second time, you can be sure it promotes (or it has promoted the first time). If you don't destroy it in the third attack, it will promote again. So, nearly all Berlin MIs were elite buy the time they died, while only a few of them started out as vets. It is very frustrating to see a conscript MI surviving 5 MAs, dying as an elite when the 6th MA is down to one HP. With an army, it wouldn't had the chance of promoting, and only one three-unit-army would suffice for a conscript MI.

Add to this that with an army, the whole army only dies after you lost all HPs of all units, instead of dying MA per MA, and you gain a lot when using them. Sometimes it means your individual MAs in the armies are underused, but I'll gladly take that disadvantage over having to replenish my troops every single turn.

And of course the last thing is that a succesful army means you can build the HE (and the academy as well, but if you don't like armies that doesn't matter), which leads to more GLs.

DeepO

[jshelr]

Deepo

Thanks for the army comments. You may be correct for the kind of game we have here. Usually, I'm fixated on blitzing with MA. The arithmetic gets pretty daunting.

Suppose you have 15 cities to blitz and anticipate 4 units defending each city. Then you need 60 armies to take over in one turn. (They don't attack repeatedly do they?) However, at least normally, most of those 60 units would turn out to be sub MI, many infantry and even some riflemen. A stack of 80+ MA would have a reasonable chance of taking the whole civ out and would certainly take out most enemy cities.

In this game, where it looks like we will be knocking heads with MI for the most part, conserving units in armies may be the smart strategy and a calmer, multi-turn strategy for an attack may be the only realistic way to proceed. Give me some bombardment, please.

[DeepO]

jshelr, you wouldn't need 60 armies, if even something like that was possible. Just use a few of them to take the hardest defenders. For Berlin, I lost so many MAs because it was a metropolis, built on a hill. If only I would have had 3 armies, it would have saved me tens of units... and yes, they can attack multiple times, but in many cases that doesn't happen because you either run out of movement points, or you don't want to risk a half-beaten army and want to let it heal first.

Oh, a stack of 80 MAs was not enough to conquer the Germans in 10 turns, and they had some 10 cities. I lost more MAs then that for the few cities I took. The same reason: the defense bonusses were too big, and they had 35 MIs (a lot of them not even on the main continent, but divided over several islands) I needed artillery, and it was my mistake I didn't bring any. Armies were not possible, as it was the first military conflict for the Babs, so you need loads of combined arms... indeed, give me some bombardment

DeepO

[Txurce]

FOREWORD

I played up until 1830 before reading any spoilers. Thanks to not getting any help from Aeson, my trading for techs has been relatively abysmal. (I’ll have to replay down the road to see why I didn’t get as good deals… and had forgotten how to sell single resources. People also quit trading me techs for anything I could take back, because I declared war on Russia with a deal ongoing.) That said, I’m not sure it’s going to matter, because there’s more than one way to win in Civ3. We’ll see.

RETOOLING

Before taking on the world, 1570 Babylon needed to appraise where it stood, and how best to advance from there. In a nutshell, Babylon lacked the benefits of population and technology, as well as a credible defense.

Determined not to build units that were already outdated, the more advanced cities started to build artillery and some naval units, while the rest strove to complete their infrastructure.

Population increase was addressed by building three coastal cities, and granaries everywhere; later, the more populous cities would contribute workers to increase the others’ populations.

Research increased in a hodgepodge manner, as Babylon traded for some with incense and oil, paid for others, researched still more and – taking advantage of one beleaguered country unlikley to fight back, declared war on the doomed Russians in exchange for a good deal on motorized transportation. But Babylon had no intention of actually fighting for centuries.

GEOPOLITICS

Because the world was an archipelago, and the AI is notoriously bad at modern-era overseas invasions, it was unlikely that any other civ would come to dominate the world before Babylon could rise to its feet. But the likeliest candidate to do so would doubltess come from one of the four civs on the largest continent. And already a future behemoth was emerging: Japan, which took the lion’s share of the Russian cities.

In 1758 Babylon entered the modern era, still ranked last on the histograph despite Russia’s demise, but already up to second in manufactured goods. Its cities pumped out tanks that would later be upgraded to modern armor. They neglected air units, which would be postponed in a calculated risk until the advent of stealth technology. And in perhaps the biggest risk of all, Babylon’s hawks decided to begin its expansion without waiting to research SDI for the protection of their cities.

Babylon’s generals had predicted that their own first action would come against China, a relatively weak nation just to the west. But when Japan invaded France – a battle of behemoths - Babylon felt that it couldn’t afford to let Japan get too far ahead. The Babylonian transports were built on the east coast and… one turn after the French sued for peace after losing three cities… the Babylonian task force set sail in 1824 for the four cities on the French island southwest of its home continent. Babylon was counting on the just-completed Japanese war to have devastated the French military enough for its eight transports (52 MA, 12 MI) to establish a beachhead, with more transports being built.

THE FRANCO-BABYLONIAN WAR (1830-1842)

In 1830, with Japan already at war with neighboring Germany, the Babylonian armor landed on French soil. In one turn, its forces took the island, capturing the three smaller cities, and abandoning the large one in the north. (Babylon replaced it a few turns later.) Resistance consisted of a few MI and even fewer MA – no aircraft or atillery… a sign that France was indeed spent after its defeat at the hands of the Japanese. Babylon decided to go for broke, and invade the mainland.

In 1834, the Babylonian armor landed on the aluminum hill next to Lyons. In the next turn, armor took Lyons (which was looted and abandoned, and then Paris, in a bloody fight. One turn later, little Besancon fell, Babylon built a city on the aluminum deposit, and our armor poised to strike out. In 1840, our units took Tours, Rheims and Grenoble, leaving France with two small cities in the east and southeast, while its two northern cities fell to the Chinese.

Two turns later, the French were no more. A few units were lost in one culture flip, and our MA losses in the war totaled 39 out of 66 units. As expected, no GLs were generated. This was acceptable given our lack of artillery or aerial support. Babylon now planned to rebuild its armor, and supplement it with an effective air force. This would take a while, but it had achieved its primary objective: critical mass before 1850. While its population was still small, Babylon now ranked third on the globe in land, manufactured goods, and GNP. Its leaders saw no reason why, with research maxed out after France was culturally pacified, it wouldn’t become the #1 power in the next hundred years.

[vulture]

I posted the start of my story in a different thread 'cos I couldn't find this one. So a brief recap:

Like most other people I started mass gpt trades for techs, and also trading oil proved very lucrative (even when I needed it, it turned out to be profitable to trade *all* my oil away and then import some from another civ - I actually made a big profit by being the middle man in the oil business this way, buy buying oil from A and selling to B rather than letting A trade to B directly). I reached the modern age in 1670, and hit the end of the tech tree in 1824 (took longer than necessary 'cos I decided to research the last two techs myself, since I could get them in 8 turns).

I managed to engineer a golden age in 1772, thanks to the Russians leaving Novogrod defended by only a spearman, while an infantry wandered around the territory. Bombardment and marines took out the infantry, leaving the bowmen to take down the spearman (plus a few MA in case Russia drafted some extra defence in the interim).

Things were pretty quiet on the war front until the end of the tech tree was reached. France and America had a brief war, which cost France two isolated cities. Then I kicked off against Russia, and everyone else joined in. Russia was way down the tech tree and easy pickings for everyone, mostly Germany. I took 3 cities in total. As mentioned in my other post, my plan was to take out China next and shift my palace there to give me two productive islands.

The best laid plans of mice and vultures go astray however. Just when my convoy was on its way back from the Russia war (I got the small island with 2 cities way up north), and passing through German territory, Germany declared war and sunk my convoy. Scratch 8 artillery, two battleships and a few MA. This rapidly lead to a world war as we both used MPPs and alliances to bolster our side. It was Babylon, France and Japan against America, Germany, India and China (Russia being extinct).

I'd just like to take a moment to laugh at anyone who thinks cruise missiles are useless. When you've got cities that can churn out 1 a turn to give you a decent supply, there is no better way of keeping your shores clear (combined with artillery and bombers to soften the target up first). China must have lost 4 fully loaded transports and escorts for the price of 8 missiles, which is pretty cheap if you ask me. I rebuilt my military after the German disaster until I had enough to stage an invasion, and meanwhile had sunk pretty much the entire Chinese navy (the joys of having spies in every other civ).

A stealth bomber blitz seperated the southern four Chinese cities from the rest to slow down the MI stack response. Then I landed a few armies, lots of artillery and plenty of MI and MA on the mountains by the southern most town. It fell before the response team turned up. A turn later the 45 MI arrived on the mountains to reclaim their city. I didn't much like my odds, so I made my big mistake of the game and hit the stack with a tactical nuke.

What I overlooked was the fact that the AI would all launch a massive counterstrike. The combined nukes of all four nations at war with me came raining down - over 20 of them, not exactly sure how many. Thanks to the SDI only 6 of them hit, but still, having 6 of your 10 productive cities whacked is pretty nasty. So I responded i nkind (belatedly) and launched my entire ICBM arsenal (kept the tac nukes in reserve 'cos they're great for taking down stacks). It turns out that my allies had responded in a similar manner, and that no-one else seemed to have SDI, so the other civs took a serious mullering. Will try to get around to posting the screenshot of the radioactive empire of the Babylonians.

Tempting to give up at this point, but I decided to struggle on to the bitter end for the comedy value. I'll admit to doing a quick reload shortly after this. I changed government to Communism, and then instantly regretted it when I remembered just how long it would take my workers to clean up the 37 tiles of pollution I had. So I reloaded from just before I switched govs (and as a fringe benefit, the change in sea levels that changed Babylon from a port to being entirely land-locked failed to re-occur). I churned out a pile of workers and set to a massive clean up and rebuilding my lost city improvements effort. Not to mention replacing the lost MI's from the cities (fortunately I made it a policy a long time ago to always stack excess units well away from all cities just to avoid nuke damage if a city gets hit).

By the time I got down to 20 polluted tiles I'd gone from 6th to 1st in the pollution stakes. The AI just doesn't clean up well. As you can imagine global warming was wiping out usable land at a rate that wasn't even funny.

I struggled on through China, and completed the takeover in the 1970's. By this point I'd finished the rebuilding of the mainland, and was actually 1st in terms of current score and power. The other civs just couldn't do the rebuilding infrastructure thing, and all of them were lacking either oil, rubber of aluminium, meaning that they just weren't producing any more modern units. So now I'm waltzing through India, takng 7 cities in 4 turns of war. Everyone is at war with everyone else most of the time (aided I suspect by the bug where you end up at war without either side wanting it - I can'y stay at peace with America for more than four turns before I get the "We've lost out supply of dyes" message (no decleration of war from either side) and once again we're fighting and America is waiting longer each time to bargain for peace and I regain my dyes supply). In 1984 I'm the only one with any nukes left (I've rebuily a good pile of ICBMs) and my militay is the only one adding modern units to it. I'm still way behind on the histograph because of the long period of being so far behind, although I'm the big dog on the block now. I don't think I'm going to have enough time to eke out a victory. With constructive use of nukes I might be able to cripple everyone else enough to boost my histograph score enough, but I doubt it.

[vulture]

A screenshot of post-apocalyptic Babylon from 1876 AD. As you can see, both China and Babylon are in a pretty poor state right now.

[vulture]

Now the minimap from 1986 AD, when Babylon is beginning to expand at a nicely increasing rate.

[vulture]

And the power graph for the game to 1986 AD. The nuclear strikes don't appear to have had any dramatic effect on the relative powers at the time, so everyone must have taken pretty similar levels of damage. Babylon is gaining power at an exponential rate (as ever) so I might just manage to pull out a victory...