AU204: Spoilers, Reports and Comments

[Jawa Jocky]

Post TBNAID blues.

So if I’m building nothing but city improvements, what would an AI civ build if they already had size 12 cities with all the improvements? If you guessed a sh*tload of cavalry you are correct.

My friends and military allies decided to trash their reputation too. They broke our trade arrangements and violated our ROP (not very well I my add). In 7 turns I was kicked off the continent. I lost 8 cities including my new Capital and Leonardo’s workshop. I did manage to get a GL during the fight and I even got it back to my home continent. I signed a MMP with Babylon but it didn’t help me with Egypt and I had to declare war on France. Soon WW forced me back into Monarchy and the timing couldn’t have been worse.

I had just achieved tech parity with the others and now I had lost a chunk of my empire and was no longer researching very effectively. I lost TOE and realized I’d lose Hoover too. Things were getting desperate so I declared a new plan for Viking people.

PBFWTGRFD or “Plan B For When Things Get Really F*cking Desperate” was a lot of pride for the Scandinavian people to swallow, but anything that prevented our mortal enemies the Egyptians from winning was a popular idea. All efforts were made to beeline to the UN and use our GL to rush the United Nations and call a vote.

The rest of the game was pretty uneventful. We lost the Northern Island and were victims of frequent bombardment until peace broke out (Babylon finished off France). The 3 nations all returned to Democracy and I was able to stay a few techs behind. Diplomatic “Victory” was achieved in a largely empty win.

[Catt]

Nice games and AAR's Konquest2 and Jawa Jocky!

Originally posted by Dominae

I wonder if Civ3 crashes or something when that happens...I've never made it all the way through the tech tree...

Yuo get to research Future Tech 1, followed by Future Tech 2, Future Tech 3 . . . what are the benefits of "Future Techs," you ask? Something like a few points added to your score (literally, a few points ) -- Aeson figured out the point value some time ago. Given how important score is to most of the players around here (at least in SP), it's not hard to imagine how many seek out those juicy Future Techs!

Originally posted by Jawa Jocky

So if I’m building nothing but city improvements, what would an AI civ build if they already had size 12 cities with all the improvements? If you guessed a sh*tload of cavalry you are correct.

Very entertaining AAR, JJ. Also, I nominate you for king of the acronyms ("IDGAFIYF" "TBNAID" and "PBFWTGRFD")

Catt

[Jawa Jocky]

And now “Random Thoughts” by Jawa Jocky

I never thought we had enough land to win this game. I made a big push to expand beyond the continent in what in hindsight can only be called a “Big waste of Time”. My hats off to Catt (again) for realizing the most efficient strategy from the start (great AAR by the way).

I made four fundamental mistakes in this game.

I let my war with Japan drag on for too long. I’m learning a new philosophy toward war. If you can’t take and hold what you want without reinforcements you shouldn’t go forward. If you rely on reinforcements to finish the job, you’re setting yourself up for a long grinding war.

Don’t trade newly acquired resources unless your positive the city won’t flip. We often bemoan “unfairly” losing our reputation. However, it’s really the players fault for not realizing (or choosing to ignore) all of the parameters. Flipping is more than just losing a city even if it’s only for just one turn (assuming IDGAFIYF).

Beware when you call a friend to help finish the enemy. You will find a stronger enemy in your friend when the mutual enemy has been destroyed. The Vikings and Egyptian tag teamed the Japanese into oblivion. The problem was really a post war issue. I had to get caught up in infrastructure after the war, but Egypt who didn’t get in till the end was already doing well. In fact after the war they had nothing to due but continue building units.

The ICS trap. A tight city spacing (C-s-s-C) is an extremely powerful opening strategy. I used it to steamroll through Greece without any problems. In fact if all you’re doing is cheap units, and base level improvements (temple, library, marketplace) you can’t go wrong. The problems start in the middle ages. The 2nd level improvements (cathedrals, universities, banks) are harder to build in smaller cities and some of the more expensive units (knights) become hard to build too. I couldn’t afford to make anything better than medieval infantry in my game (the problem worked in tandem with my 1st problem). Even further into the game the problem gets worse. In fact, my cities were useless in the Industrial era until they had a Factory and RR all over them and even then there is no way to snag a Wonder unless you’re ahead or have GLs. I’m really going to make an effort to overcome a bad habit here. CITIES ARE NOT PERMANENT!!! I still like ICS but I need to have barracks only cities that are deconstructed later. I want the best of both worlds (why do I get Sam Hagar’s voice in my head whenever I hear that expression?).

[Dominae]

Jawa Jocky, check out the thread "City placement redux..." for a current discussion of city-spacing. My own view is that it depends largely on the terrain, but 3-spacing is best most of the time.

The fact that you did not feel your cities were very productive was due to the geography of the home island. I presume you had a lot of coastal cities. These compete for productive land tiles with the cities in the interior. It takes a long time to get them to the state (number of improvements) you would expect from a land-locked city with access to 12 "real" tiles. But that's not really a problem because by the time you do get those improvements up, you've got more of them, and therefore more Commerce that you ever would with a looser city-spacing. The key is to focus your cities into "Production centers" for military units and such, and into "Commerce gatherers". An example from recent memory is my AU203 game, where my interior cities would produce all my units, while the coastal cities just sat back and raked in the cash.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

I have a very strong rule of thumb against fighting Japan when they have samurai and I don't have cavalry. I like my wars cheap and quick, and trying to take on samurai with medieval infantry is likely to be a slow and expensive proposition.

As long as at least one of the neighboring continents remained fairly evenly divided between its home AIs, this game was perfect for a combination of (1) Leonardo's, (2) deliberately avoiding trading for Chivalry unless and until it's genuinely needed, and (3) building a good-sized horseman army and upgrading to cavalry. That can provide an excellent way for a civ with more gold than production to build up a workable invasion force, and being alone on a relatively small land mass made knights a lot less important for defense than they would have been under other circumstances.

Nathan

[badams52]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I have a very strong rule of thumb against fighting Japan when they have samurai and I don't have cavalry. I like my wars cheap and quick, and trying to take on samurai with medieval infantry is likely to be a slow and expensive proposition.

Yes, Samurai can be a pain the the but. I got lucky recently and Japan only had one source of Iron and hadn't been to war after discovering Chivalry. I declared war, rushed in with my riders (I was China) followed closely by pikemen and pillaged their one iron source. They weren't so powerful after that.

[Bluefrog]

First, let me apologize for lack of screenshots. I’m at work right now, and didn’t really take that many screenshots in the first place. On the plus side, my game is a pretty easy one to conceptualize. Also, I know I started a post early on in this thread about being Korea and borging out the continent. I quickly got a distaste in my mouth…I might try borging a bit more in the future, but the micromanagement didn’t come very easily, most notably the managing different tiles shared by cities. So, I decided to start again, and got the Secret Civ! But, alas, I didn’t want to stray from my first game that much, so I started again and got Korea again. Monarch level.

The Power of Gold! (maybe an idea for the next AU?)

Things started rather uneventfully for Korea. Greece didn’t help much in the tech side of things, but at least I was able to curb their expansion by blocking settler teams with warriors. They did get two additional cities built, but defended the one nearest me with a warrior! Seizing this opportunity, I razed the city, sued for peace (netting me a couple of techs), and stifled further Greek expansion by closely monitoring its borders.

After I fully explored the initial landmass, I printed a gridded copy of it so I could plot out my cities. I overlapped a number of tiles, but not near as much as pure borging. I had decided what my goal was in this game, before knowing the rest of the map: I was going to create a gold-making machine.

The first step was a combined effort of assimilating the Greeks and researching towards a representative government. All my tech research went toward the Republic, which did a couple of things. I was able to build up a decent treasury…even at 100% science, I was barely making a dent in the number of turns for the second- and third-tier techs, so I decided to just research them at 40. I was able to trade for the techs I skipped with Greece, for the most part, making sure I got Iron Working. After all, I was amassing warriors that wouldn’t stand a chance against their hoplites, if it were not for iron. The mass upgrade of about 15 warriors (not a huge amount, but keep in mind the Greeks were piddling around with 2 cities to their empire, with only Athens truly defended properly.) One ROP violation later, and the Greeks were finally erased from the annals of history. About 6 turns later, I made contact with Egypt. Hail, hail the Arrian Deception!

The game went rather quickly at this point, since I had commited myself to the builder mindset. The Greek blood was easy to wash away, as I welcomed their slaves into my society with open arms. I had some brave sailors in my fleet who sailed west, but they never made it back. Shortly afterward, though, I received word from the French. (My galley took on water after glimpsing the French border, and luckily, Joan showed up in my advisor screen).

My city spacing would allow all but one of my cities to grow to metro size, with very nearly all of them being coastal. The problem I ran into was that I only had 11 cities on my continent, and I needed 12 for my FP. Egypt already claimed the little island to the west, so I was forced to built a very temporary worker city in order to start construction on my FP, which I placed on my western coast.

Which brings me to a quick question…how do you disband a city by building workers? I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t seem to get a pop 1 city to push out a worker and disband the city. I had to abandon the city, and didn’t get the worker that was complete in the production queue.

At any rate, my cities progressed rapidly. After I switched to Republic, I was able to build up a huge treasury and rush improvements like mad. I wanted to get the most out of each improvement, especially the financial ones, so I made it a point to rush them in any city that couldn’t produce them quickly. I was able to nab the Colossus, Coppernicus, and Newton’s all in my capital, which lent itself very nicely to my tech lead. Things were going famously…I was able to keep a small military, due to having no physical borders with anyone. While the other civs were fighting amongst themselves, my scientists were hard at work. There were times when I needed more gold for rushing, and I increased my taxes for a turn or two. I was determined to make the Koreans shine through their civ traits, and really, it wasn’t that difficult. I had to resist the urge of invading someone, because at this point, I had no idea if I had any of the later resources, which would be key to my Spaceship victory. But, I kept everything in close, only lashing out toward the much-larger Egyptians to wrest the island off my west coast from their grasp.

At any rate, the late game was a lot closer than was comfortable. Japan swallowed the Germans, but Egypt overran the Japanese to take control of their large continent. China got off to a bad start, and were never a factor. France ended up swallowing Babylon. So, from the mid-Industrial period on, the game was down to France, Egypt, China, and myself.

I was determined to get SETI in my capital, to have all the science wonders in one city, and it was nearly my undoing. The only super-productive city I had, in terms of shields, was my Iron Works city. I could have built SETI there without incident, but I wanted the better effects from combining it with Copp. and Newton’s. France started build it, too, but in a city far, far more productive. I saw that unless I sabotaged their production, and quickly, I was going to lose the wonder. This was not an acceptable outcome. So, tech went to 0%, and I was gaining somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 gpt. I was going on 25 turns to completion, but Lyons was able to get to it in 13, so every bit of that gold would be needed, as I attempted a safe sabotage as often as I could. And…sabotaging wonders is costly. After 3 successful sabotages, I was able to secure the wonder.

But at great cost. My tech lead had all but vanished, and it was difficult to regain. But lo and behold, the economic engine I had constructed would again come to save the day! I put science again at 0% for a couple of turns, and rather than trade out the wazoo in gpt for the techs I needed, or spend 4 turns researching them myself, I stole the techs for a fraction of what it would cost to buy it. I was then able to out-research the French and Egyptians to the next tech, and drain their treasury by trading it to them. The real test to the endgame was in Spaceship construction…I had to rely not only on getting the techs first, but on doing proper prebuilds. (And with an empire as small as mine, the Palace prebuild wasn’t going to work…it would be built too quickly!) My Iron Works town was cranking out over 100 shields, and a few more were in the 50-70 range, but when Egypt has some great land and no city overlap, they had more industrial powerhouses than me.

I ended the game via Spaceship victory, by margin of one part. But, Egypt hadn’t started the final piece yet, but I know if this were at any higher difficulty, I would have lost using the same strategy, at least if the Ais developed into Killer Ais like they did here.

Some things I learned: Commercial/Scientific are very, very synergistic. Sure, the former benefits from tigher spacing, whereas the latter has cheap libraries that can link borders pretty quickly. But, the fact that they both benefit so much from coastal cities is so very sweet. I could switch between 4-turn modern techs to 1500+ gpt…from 12 cities. It would have been even higher gpt had I not strived for WLTKD and devoted 10% to lux. Which…I probably shouldn’t have done that, since something tells me WLTKD only affects shield production, which wasn’t a priority in most cities.

[Dominae]

Nice angle on this game Bluefrog. 1500 gpt! One question: did you use the AU mod? I ask because the SS victory in the mod is quite different from stock Civ3.


Dominae

[Catt]

Nice game Bluefrog Glad to see the peaceful route worked for another player as well! And it's amazing how much your thought process and game circumstances matched my own!

Originally posted by Bluefrog
The Power of Gold! (maybe an idea for the next AU?)

Believe it or not, I think this was the very title of an AU game played some time back and then re-played with PTW civs when PTW was released in the US!

Which brings me to a quick question…how do you disband a city by building workers? I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t seem to get a pop 1 city to push out a worker and disband the city. I had to abandon the city, and didn’t get the worker that was complete in the production queue.

The city must have no food surplus at the time of completion -- i.e., the one remaining pop point must be converted to a specialist or working a tile that produces no food (mountain).

I was able to keep a small military, due to having no physical borders with anyone.

This is always one of the harder balancing acts for me in peaceful games -- keeping a small but effective military -- small enough to not be a drain on the economy but large (and strong) enough not to invite invasion. In my game, I spent a fair chunk of gold upgrading spearmen to pikemen out of fear that an invasion of knights would quickly take a city or two if the AI landed more than one or two units in the initial landing. The invasion never came, and I ended up disbanding most of my pikes as infantry came online (a few riflemen before that, as well). Was my upgrade money well spent? I don't know, because I don't know if an invasion would have occured but for the upgrade.

I was determined to get SETI in my capital, to have all the science wonders in one city, and it was nearly my undoing. The only super-productive city I had, in terms of shields, was my Iron Works city. I could have built SETI there without incident, but I wanted the better effects from combining it with Copp. and Newton’s.

In games that I'm winning going away, and just playing out to the end, I often like to have such a "city of pride" as part of my empire. But you should be aware that building SETI in your science city isn't necessarily any better for tech research than building it elsewhere. The science wonders are best in your cities that produce a lot of commerce (hence the Colossus with pre-flight science wonders is pretty great). But absent the effects of the Colossus (which adds a one commerce to each tile already producing one), the three science improvements only operate on the city's base commercial output -- meaning that a city that produces 20 gold towards science will produce 40 gold with Copernicus (20 + [100%*20]) and 60 gold with Copernicus and Newton's (20 + [100% * 20] + [100% * 20]), not 80 gold -- in other words, the science wonders don't work on each other, only on base city production. In other other words, building each of the three science wonders in three different cities that each produce 20 base beakers (after taking into account corruption and a common science slider position) will yield the same science productivity as building all three wonders in the same city that also produces 20 base beakers.

None of that takes away from your valiant sabotage efforts, however!

It would have been even higher gpt had I not strived for WLTKD and devoted 10% to lux. Which…I probably shouldn’t have done that, since something tells me WLTKD only affects shield production, which wasn’t a priority in most cities.

You're correct - it only affects shields, and, in my game, given the dearth of any real shiled producers -- especially any producers suffering from any significant waste (it was a small land-mass), I found that WLTKD did almost nothing for my empire.

Catt

[Bluefrog]

Dom -- Yes, it was the AU PtW mod, which made the sci/comm combo even more potent, because I needed to research more techs. Also, my gpt was aided from all my cities not building SS parts being put on wealth, heh.

Catt -- I haven't read through your AAR yet, though I plan to tonight. As for my military, I upgraded spears to pikes, then pikes to, er, infantry, I believe. Maybe a few riflemen in there. I had very few offensive units...after Greece was gone, I disbanded all of my swords to aid in construction of marketplaces/libraries. The only civ to ever demand tribute was Japan, whom I told ever-so-politely to shove it. They backed down, as Egypt was currently laying into them.

My only war after the Grecian Downfall was with Egypt, who was much, much bigger than I. I wanted that island. The location was perfect...just a few tiles from my FP, and so much coast! And it was woefully underdefended with 2 spearmen (I was building tanks). The island fell quickly, and Egypt's counterattack was through combined naval/air strikes to the mountains around my capital. I repsonded with some naval and air power of my own, but luckily sued for peace soon after. This was right before I was going for SETI, which is the main reason my capital wasn't producing shields like it should. My depleted worker staff just wasn't large enough to rebuild everything fast enough...I only had 5 workers at this point, heh.

I just realized I never even built one H'wacha (bless you).

[Jawa Jocky]

Originally posted by Catt
I ended up disbanding most of my pikes as infantry came online

Sorry, a bell just went off. You don't upgrade to musketmen? I'm assuming you have analyzed this thoroughly and found the upgrade isn’t worth the gold?

[Bluefrog]

Jawa and Catt --

Actually, I don't think I upgraded many spears. I disbanded them, and built pikes from scratch...no, this wasn't a thorough analytical decision. I was at war so rarely, my initial batch of troops were mainly regulars. Since my military was so small, and most cities had all the improvements I wanted, it was better for me to build it all fresh, getting vet troops instead of regs.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Jawa Jocky

Sorry, a bell just went off. You don't upgrade to musketmen? I'm assuming you have analyzed this thoroughly and found the upgrade isn’t worth the gold?

I frequently upgrade some pikes into muskets (and then into rifles, etc.), particularly in my border cities and/or for a large enough reserve force to garrison conquered cities when a war looms.

The upgrade cost from pike to musket is significant (60 gold w/o Leo's, IIRC), and I often stop upgrading at pikes (and spears!) in many "safe" interior cities and start building new defenders at Nationalsim or Replaceable Parts. In a pinch, I can still upgrade as needed; at Nationalism, I can draft if needed; and at RP, I can start churning out infantry and arty as needed as factories come online. A pike-to-infantry upgrade chain costs 120 gold without Leo's (IIRC), and, given the right circumstances, I'd rather preserve that 120 gold and build infantry in core cities with little else to build, sequentially replacing old pike defenders with infantry, and using the old pike to hurry improvements in outlying border regions.

Under AU 204 and my decision to "go peaceful," I saw no reason to spend the gold to upgrade pikes for one extra defensive point. I shared no land border, meaning the only attack would come via intercontinental landing, and meaning further that I would have first crack at the invaders as they waited, unfortified, on my road system. I preferred having a few mobile defenders (knights and then cavs) and relying on my ability to move additional pikes to the threatened cities before an attack (much of my city spacing was 3-tile spacing). I probably could have avoided the upgrade to pikes from spears, but I could see warfare involving knights on the other landmasses, and if someone landed three or four kinghts next to a city guarded by a spearman (or two), I could have taken quite a blow -- the pike upgrade was as much for defense as it was for wanting to appear stronger and therefore deter an attack (we're told by Firaxians that the AI uses some calculation involving not just number of units, but the A and D values of units in determining whether another civ is a juciy target). Finally, the age of "pike" or "musket" was when I was planning on making my technology judo move and springing into the tech lead -- I wasn't willing to spend gold on anything that I felt wasn't absolutely necessary (and rushing universities was far more important than moving defenders from "3" to "4").

Catt

[Jawa Jocky]

Okay. I just wanted to make sure the upgrade to musket wasn't a "never do unless your in a pinch" waste of gold. Thank you.

[Nor Me]

I loaded AU204 (Incidentally, I used the New Game button the other day. It still works in PTW!) and got Russia. My previous game was as the English so I judged them too similar and resolved to restart. Looking at the poll, it appeared that some civs came up much more frequently than others so I decided to play with the last civ I was given. Dominae, you're too predictable. The secret civ could have been Babylon. That would have caused difficulty for players like me.
Over half an hour later, I started playing as Spain (AU MOD PTW Emperor). Right Commercial, Religious, Conquistador... That's an ICS opening with a Democratic GA perfect for building. Obviously.

Can I start by apologising to the many expansionist players out there. My first hut gave a settler.

OK. Met Greece, researched Pottery, did some exploring, panic. I'm alone on an island with Greece. Against hoplites, I really need swords or horses, preferably swords. So that's Iron Working and a pile of gold for upgrades. It would also be nice to make contact fast and preferably have a decent shot at the Great Lighthouse or Library if not both or at least something that could be one or the other. That's Writing, Map making and Literature. I can rely on the Greeks to get Writing and maybe Map making but I might not want to give them Iron Working and want to wipe them out too fast for extortion. Which ever way you look at it, that's ****loads of gold as early as possible. The only way I can get that is by the Colossus and early GA. No ICS: Madrid doesn't really want to build more than 1 settler and I don't want to be expanding during my GA.
That should justify an OCP expansion and researching Masonry as my second tech, right? And clearing forest around Barcelona first for a fast granary there as well? This is my empire one turn before the start of my GA: