AU204: Spoilers, Reports and Comments

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

Well I played a little more today. Things are fairing better but I'm still far from guaranteed victory. Babylon is almost gone. They have two cities left at the far north of their continent. France is a powerhouse. I managed to get in a settler on the other continent near the city of Babylon. Soon after setting up my city a ton of cavalry marched past. They are way ahead tech and score wise. I'm actually thinking of calling off my war with Egypt and going after France. A big problem with that is Joan is gracious towards me and I don't know if I want to break such a good friendship yet.

My war with Egypt is slow. We're almost at a stalemate. I managed to take Hamburg easily. But that has been my only sucess today. Using musketmen fortified on mountains I am managing to reduce the number of offensive units the Egyptians have. My first offensive push was not very sucessful. I sent 3 caravels loaded with 7 berserkers up north to attack a size 12 city. All but one was lost with only 2 defenders dead. I attacked another city with 9 or 10 knights. I only lost 1 in the assult but all the others had to retreat back to the safety of a nearby city. There was a stack of Egyptians coming and all my knights had 1 hp left. I'm sending in more knights from the homeland but it's a slow process.
Egypt twice has scared me by sending boats trying to get behind my defenses. But both times all they landed is 1 knight. If they were any smarter it may have been a problem.

Tech wise I've pretty much caught up to Egypt. Egypt is out of the middle age now but luckily for me they don't have military tradition. I'm about 15 turns away from it myself. I don't even think they have metallurgy yet. Hopefully France doesn't give it to them. I just bought Magnetism from the French for a hefty sum of money but I think it was worth it. With the increased capacity of my upgraded ships I'll be able to attack with more berserkers and send more knights to the front quicker.

Germany has been super helpful the entire war. Not only are they drawing the Egyptians towards their cities they are taking care of at least half of the Egyptian units in my territory. Bismark is currently gracious towards me to and I just may spare his little civilization while I deal with the French. But that's not gonna be for a while yet.

Catt thanks for the AAR. Work was kinda slow today and it gave me something to read.

More to come...

BigD

[Konquest02]

Whoa!! Great AAR Catt! This definetly should go in the "Must Read" category.


--Kon--

[Catt]

Additional Game Notes

This was a fun game for me. As I said in trying to get AU 204 started, I happen to enjoy the random civ / random map setting experience -- it makes the early game very interesting for me and also tends to force me into more of a role-playing experience that I enjoy.

That being said, I think this was one of those random games where map features, much more so than civ traits, determine the course of the game. Civ traits definitely played a large role (and I'll explain below), but to my mind's eye, once it became clear that I shared a smallish, somewhat bleak landmass with the Greeks, whatever civ I had been playing I almost surely would have gone the early swordsman conquest route. With the Greeks subdued, the intersting question was (1) prepare to invade or (2) sit tight and trade. So, some points / learnings that I couldn't really weave into my long AAR / story.

* How did expansionist help? Obviously in popping huts -- including the settler in 3650 BC. The trait also allowed me to quickly get my arms around the situation. Without knowledge that we truly were isolated with Greece (and for the longest time I actually though that Athens sat on a chokepoint of a landbridge west -- I could just see land from the northwesternmost portion of our island -- it was the little island but I couldn'tt see that at the time -- and until my scout moved right outside the Athens, I felt it was likely that Athens was on a narrows to a far larger landmass), I might very well have decided to research MM or Literature for the GL instead of IW -- that would have set conquest back a long ways, and would have prevented employing the Arrian Deception.

* How did Scientific help? Coastal cities can really be research powerhouses, but it takes a godawful long time to build universities -- not when you're scientific and have a worker core for planting and clearing forests, though. Between forestry operations and rush-buying, I bet I had 8 or 9 universities up and running only 12 or 15 turns after buying Education. I planted and cleared and replanted forests on every tundra tile, and some of the grassland tiles (I then went back and cleared forest on tundra after RR's just because pollution takes longer to clear from forest vs. mine).

* Someone mentioned in the spoilers that this map reminded them of the "Son of so very cold . . ." AU game awhile back, and I agree with this sentiment. In that game, I (like everyone else) fought my way off that rock to secure some decent terrain -- but that was with the Romans. In this game, I expected I might need to get off our island, and was somewhat preparing to do so -- my FP placement in the center of the island anticipated a leader-powered Palace relocation in the future. But with the scientific Russians, I decided to play it out and see if I could grab and keep a tech lead after universities were up -- I would have played differently if I had drawn the Koreans as my "random" civ.

* I misjudged my potential tech advancement -- I built libraries earlier than they could possibly be needed, mainly because (1) I hoped to suicide-gallley my way to a quick run up the tech tree to Education, and (2) I wasn't building any temples, and felt I needed some culture. It wasn't huge, but I definitely paid several hundred gold in library maintenence costs that I could have avoided.

* A very interesting trading mishap occurred -- but I don't have the saves to replicate it. Sometime late Saturday night (I was up late with a sick kid after having gone to bed earlier) I rebooted the game and played several turns before noticing that I wasn't trading dyes to Egypt for wines. Egypt had declared war against Japan sometime before I had previously turned off the game - severing our trade route through Japanese coastal and sea routes. When the war concluded, I was again able to trade dyes for wines, and could even buy an asset (tech or map) for gpt or my luxury -- in other words, the severing of our trade route apparently didn't cause a rep hit to me. Unfortunately the only previous save I had was from something like 25 turns prior. I couldn't remember clearly and with absolute certainty if I had actually let the previous deal lapse somehow, but I felt pretty sure I hadn't -- the entire game I was making sure to automatically renew all trade deals, every time (and I play with "always renegotiate" on). When I went back and reloaded the earlier save after I finished the game, and I set all my units on fortify and clicked through turns waiting to see if events unfolded in the same vein, Egypt didn't go to war with Japan, so I couldn't verify the broken deal. In any event, it got me to thinking that none of us really knows all the ins-and-outs of reputation and how and to what extent damage is done. Final lesson on this point - it was awfully risky to enter into a trade deal with Egypt before Navigation / Magnetism -- I was risking my reputation on something I absolutely couldn't control, and all for one measly luxury.

* This is the second AU game in a row where I thought I could easily build Smith's and failed miserably. I need to get a better handle on both pre-builds and AI tech paths, particularly under AU Mod rules.

* The map, combined with the AU Mod, convinced me to switch to a Democracy! even though I was not religious and was already a Republic. I wouldn't have done that in a standard game. Anarchy lengths -- 7 turns and 6 turns, respectively.

* After the game, I reloaded to a turn a few turns before I completed the UN, and replayed it from there -- even then, Babylon didn't get to be a candidate (Hammmy controlled more land on the continent north of France at the time, and so was more of a counterweight to Egypt) -- in a two-way race with Egypt I would have lost the vote 3-2! I lost a game like this not too long ago under PTW standard rules, and internalized that even absent MAs or MPPs, AI civs tend to vote for their enemy's enemy.

Originally posted by DeepO
Catt, that was to be expected. Let's say Alphabet costed 200 beakers to research, you had researched it for 9 turns at 1 beaker/turn. If so, you only decreased the cost of the tech by 9 beakers, which would be hardly noticable. Sure, you might have been nearly 25% done, but for the Greeks, that doesn't mean the tech cost got down 25%, instead it got down 5% because of the collected beakers.

40-turn researching is only good when you're sure that you won't be able to trade it beforehand, if so, you're better of setting 0% research.

A good point! and one I muddled considerably in my AAR -- the forty-turn research will rarely affect trade cost to any meaningful degree for exactly the reason you've described -- the much more important factor is the growth of the treasury during those 40 turns -- I met Alex early enough that my measly treasury, combined with Pottery didn't even get a "I doubt they'd accept" -- IIRC, it was "they'd be insulted." On the other hand, 40-turn researching (or some minimum research level) strikes me as a must in the early game -- you simply don't know if you'll be isolated or not, and I would hate to waste 10 or 15 turns at 0% only to find myself on an island. Researching towards MM at 40 turns initially then makes sense -- but after finding the Greeks, I would have been better served to (1) switch my research and forfeit the few accumulated turns, or (2) set it to 0% and counted on buying the tech.

But I have found that even 40-turn research can affect costs in certain circumstances, particularly when there's an inattentive pilot at the controls . More often than I care to admit, I find myself with 10 turns to go on a 40-turn pace and only then notice that my 20% slider is now generating 2 or 3 or even 4 beakers because I've gotten really lucky with early growth -- it's then that it is time to slap the forehead, reduce the slider to 10% and growl to see that the treasury has received a nice spurt while I wonder how many turns of increased cash-flow I've wasted.

Originally posted by Dominae
1. I must say you got lucky with Steam Power! I'm still waiting for this to get fixed...You may have seen the poll I posted for this game (who got which civ). Enough people are getting Russians and Koreans on their first try to achieve statistical significance. Maybe something similar to the "list" problem for free techs is at work here? Or maybe it has to do with the set AI civs?

Hugely lucky. I too will be happy to see the bug fixed -- it will make scientific civs a much more interesting play. I'd say the preponderance of Korea's shows that something similar is at work with the "random" civ selector when a scenario is limited to certain playable civs -- I have not seen any anomaly like this in standard rules' random games.

2. The screenshot in Part 6 is just wrong (go back and check it out...and try not to blame me for seeing it first!).

I looked at it again. What's wrong with it?

3. You consistently refused to use "dirty tricks". I agree with you on the "MPP to win UN votes" one. But the others I probably would have used, especially the "sacrifice a unit to a UU to blow their GA" trick. People do that all the time in MP.

MP is a whole different ball game, and I'd probably use any dirty trick, within the rules of course, in an MP game. The only reason I don't like the ultra-early AI GA trick (i.e. bop a hoplite on sight) is that the AI seems to waste the GA completely -- building settlers that, shield-wise, are done in 5 turns but pop wise are done in 10+ turns. A human would, or course, manage an ultra-early GA much more effectively. BTW - I never thought of this "dirty trick" until Sir Ralph (it was SR, wasn't it?) posted it in your Dirty Tricks thread. It is evil

4. How many Galleys did you lose crossing the ocean?

Don't know -- I didn't keep track -- but it was a lot! I frankly thought I would succeed a lot more quickly than I did -- I'm usually better at guessing where the other land might be.

5. How do you like Cossacks?

They sure were pretty, fortifed there in strategic locations around the motherland, just waiting for the invasion that never came.

@BigDork -- don't let bad RNG results get to you -- if you keep up with the berzerkers from caravels or galleons against musketmen, you'll make breakthroughs.

Catt

Edit: grammar and spelling

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Catt
I looked at it again. What's wrong with it?

Think dirty.

[BigDork]

Originally posted by Dominae
Think dirty.

Yeah, I didn't see it until you mentioned it.

BigD

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dominae


Think dirty.

Your comment makes me think of "dirty tricks." What do you mean?





Oh . . . now I see . . . but . . . I'm married with children . . . anything related to that subject is ancient history . . . (which is why I have time to play Civ).

Catt

[Catt]

Originally posted by Catt
. . . [t]he [expansionist] trait also allowed me to quickly get my arms around the situation. Without knowledge that we truly were isolated with Greece (and for the longest time I actually though that Athens sat on a chokepoint of a landbridge west -- I could just see land from the northwesternmost portion of our island -- it was the little island but I couldn'tt see that at the time -- and until my scout moved right outside the Athens, I felt it was likely that Athens was on a narrows to a far larger landmass), I might very well have decided to research MM or Literature for the GL instead of IW . . .

emphasis added

To follow up on a query . . . the gift of maps from the northwestern hut allowed me to see a spot of land west of our landmass, and our scouts didn't immediately cross into Athens' land -- this screenshot might give a better feel for why I thought the Greeks might be controlling access to a larger landmass.

Catt

[BRC]

Originally posted by Dominae


Think dirty.

I just got it. Dom, you need help.

[Dominae]

As your typical college student, I suppose that I'm in the right category of the people that does not consider things related to "that subject" ancient history...

But I resent the comment that I need help. I got a good laugh at it because I felt so childish. Now I've moved on.




Dominae

[BRC]

Originally posted by Dominae
As your typical college student, I suppose that I'm in the right category of the people that does not consider things related to "that subject" ancient history...

But I resent the comment that I need help. I got a good laugh at it because I felt so childish. Now I've moved on.




Dominae

You know I'm kidding. If I was the first to see that, you had better believe that I would have made a similiar joke.

Catt- Sorry to hear it.

Goodnight everyone.

[Catt]

Originally posted by BRC

Catt- Sorry to hear it.

It's not as bad as I made it sound. We married folk like to scare the crap out of the single folk, particularly the college students that enjoy a degree of freedom (but also deprivation) long since lost to us. And now I'm off to bed, too. Goodnight!

Catt

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

Things are improving a little for me. I'm slowly pushing back the Egyptian borders. I've managed to capture 3 Egyptian cities and raze another but it was costly.

I had thought things were going well. I was building up my forces for a quick strike on Giza from the north and Edo from the south. A couple of turns before my attack things took a turn for the bad. Germany and Egypt signed a peace treaty. This was bad. Germany had been distracting Egypt for most of the war. They were proving invaluable in taking pressure off me. If that wasn't bad enough Egypt has cavalry. They sent in a few towards my more productive cities on their continent. Well I was still a ways away from mil tradition and this was definatly not good. Well I re-enforced my cities and let them grind themselves up against my musketmen.

I struck Edo and Giza with a combination of knights and berserkers. Both fell without a lot of grief. I quickly put about 10 - 15 units in each trying to quell resistors and hopefully prevent a flip and regrouped. Egypt kept sending a couple of cavalry a turn in to harass me and it was starting to irk me. So I made a deal with France and got military tradition myself. I quickly upgraded all my knights to cavalry and switched from making berserkers on the home island to making cav as well.

While I was regrouping and upgrading I decided to attack Hieraconpolis with some berserkers. They have a wonder or two there and I figure razing their city would hurt them some. This is also the same city I tried to attack yesterday and was screwed over by the RNG. I loaded up 2 galleons with 4 berserkers each and sent them on their way. I knew that Egypt had frigates so I tried to stay as far away from anything Egyptian so I could sneak attack them. Well it didn't work. Two frigates came straight at me. This made me wonder but whatever. They sunk both of my galleons in one turn. 8 berskerkers lost. I probably should have made a frigate or two the escort them but I was impatient and it cost me in the end.

Next I set my sights on Heliopolis. The Egyptians had just completed J.S. Bach's there and I wanted to take the city. I grabbed about 10 cavalry and a couple of musketmen for protection and made my way towards it. I stuck to the mountains and hills incase of a raid by cavalry. Well I got into sight of Heliopolis and what do I see...a rifleman. WtF??? I know that Egypt isn't that far ahead of me. At this point I wasn't even out of the middle ages yet. They must have been doing some wheeling and dealing with France. Well I'm ticked off now. I spend a lot of money and bribe France back into the war. I also give Bismark military tradition and he rejoins the war as well. Soon German cavalry is headed through my territory towards Cleo's cities and Joan is taking Egyptian cities on the small islands near her continent.

Well, I figure they can't have had nationalism for long and hope they haven't had time to upgrade too much so I attack. Big mistake. I only loose 2 cavalry luckily but it was an utter failure. I manage to kill off 1 rifleman and wound another. But now he's an elite. I retreat in shame to Giza to heal and regroup some more. I send in about 12 cavalry freshly trained from the home continent and send them up to Giza to swell the number of cavalry to almost 20.

While this is happening Egypt is sending frigates out of Byblos to bombard my coastal areas. This gets annoying real fast and I decide to leave Heliopolis for now and focus on taking out Byblos first. I send up my army of cavalry and hit the city hard. Finally I get a little break. They only had one rifleman in the city. I took about 3 or 4 cavalry to bring him down but down he went. Then I finished off a few musketmen and Byblos was mine. In the process I also destroyed 3 frigates.

With Byblos now under Viking control it was time to deal with Heliopolis. I'd sent a few more newly formed cavalry up to the front which pretty much replaced what had been lost on the assult on Byblos. Again moving through the hills for protection we approaced Helio. An attack by Egyptian cavalry killed my defending musketmen and wounded one of my own cavalry before I got a chance to attack. Then next turn I took out the enemy cavalry first and then went all out on Heliopolis. It was a close thing actually. I was not getting lucky with my units retreating. Also it would take about 3 or 4 cavalry units to take out one rifleman. But in the end I prevailed. But due to appaling losses and no defenders close enough I decided to raze the city instead of trying to hold it until re-enforcements could arrive. But I did manage to get 6 slav...workers and 2 catapults. I also took out a great leader the Egyptians must have gotten on defense.

And that brings me to what has totally ticked me off this whole game. I have yet to get a single great leader. I am militaristic right? I have a huge number of elite units and I'm using them rather smartly if I do say so. I'm not just throwing them away or anything. No luck what so ever.

France is taking off. They're almost 200 points ahead of me now. I've managed to pass Egypt but there's no way I'm passing France. I'm slowly gaining momentum as I take more and more cities from the Egyptians. I don't think I'm gonna win this one though. France is just too far head. And what's worse is they managed to slip a city in on the continent. If you look at the top of the screenshot you can see the the French city. Hopefully Egypt will take that from them. I do not want France to have a toe hold on this continent. It's mine .

Well, that's about it for now. The screenshot shows the far reaches of my territory. The one pile of rubble in the middle is where Heliopolis used to be. More to come...

BigD

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

Today is a good day. No, a great day for the Viking people. The war is almost over. The Egyptians almost destroyed. We have sucessfully pushed back their forces. They now have but two cities to call their own. Soon Egypt will be no more.

My luck took a change for the better today. The RNG decided that it would be nice to me today. Nothing completely absurd happend like in the past. Actually I got lucky. I got not one but two great leaders today. My first two of the game. I used the first to jump my palace to the middle of the continent. The second leader appeared at a perfect time, right as I was getting Theory of Evolution. Oh yeah, baby.

France is out of the war and is actually annoyed with me. They went from gracious to annoyed in one turn. I find that kinda stupid honestly. But whatever. One good thing is they lost their city on the continent to the Egyptians which in turn I took so they are off my contenint(see yesterday's post). Even with ToE I'm still at least 3 techs behind France. The score is getting ridiculious. They're almost 300 points ahead. My plan now this.
#1-Finish off Egypt. They have two cities left and I have 40 cavalry. No problem.
#2-Take out Germany. Bismark has been a true friend and ally the whole game(that's a first) Bismark is behind me in tech and doesn't have the sheer number of troops I do. It shouldn't take to long to take his 5 cities.
#3-Sit and wait. I'm going for a domination win(culture sucks and with only me and Joan left no point in the UN. Space probably won't happen, I'm too far behind). I'm gonna build up the nukes and the MA, get an RoP, nuke the hell outta France, break RoP and hope it's enough. We're talking lots of nukes. I plan on using my one city on Joan's continent as a staging point. Unfortunatly right now France is threatening me about every 15-20 turns and there's nothing I can do but give in. I need my one city on her continent and I can't fight two fronts. I just don't have the resources.I only have 1 city at size 12. She has a bunch over 12. Lots of nukes.

Well, that's it for now. I don't think I have much chance of winning this one. But I'm gonna to do fighting. My next session should see an end to Egypt and Germany. After that it's just me and the French. This is a great game. Probably the best I've played yet. I'm really enjoying the fact that I don't think I'm gonna win. Makes it more exciting. It's time for a beer. More to come...

BigD

[nbarclay]

BigD, now that you have a second core, and once you finish off Egypt so your Egyptian subjects accept their fate of living under your rule, you should be able to easily blow Joan away in research on Regent level. I'm assuming you've been in Monarchy to fight such a long war. Once you finish off Germany, switch to Democracy if you have it, or Republic if you don't have Democracy, and your research will get a huge boost. From there, it's just a matter of building enough science-oriented and wealth-oriented city improvements (although you may want to go for factories first to help you build everything else faster). The space race is yours if you want it.

Nathan

[BigDork]

Nathan...

Yep, been in Monarchy since I first got it. What you say makes sense. I recently traded Joan Replaceable Parts for 2 techs, Industrialization and Democracy. I'm already building factories in all my cities. I should have enough cavalry to finish off the Egyptians and the Germans so I'm not too worried about the loss of production. One question, do you think it'd be a good idea to switch to mobilization to hurry the factories along? The war with Egypt is in sight so I won't be stuck in mobilization. However I'm slowly working on building libraries, universities ands such and cannot while in mobilization. Maybe I'll give it a try. Thanks for your input, I appreciate it.

BigD