AU 503 DAR 2: Up to 1000 BC

[Aqualung71]

2. Let’s Go a-Pillaging

Continuing on from unfinished business, our CS left the Mongols’ raped lands and headed towards Hittit-ania. They then proceeded to pillage a few squares and nabbed a worker in the process, who then picked his way carefully home accompanied by a CS. Our pillaging soon petered out having lost the element of surprise, but not before we had disconnected their Incense and pillaged their sugar and wheat tiles. The Mongols and Hittites are almost out of the game now and only the Vikings remain a threat on our home continent. We have 23 turns to go on the SoZ and then plan to send our AC after the Vikings.

Scores at 1000BC were somewhat lower, but with less range. Our Incas were 173, Vikings topped out at 272, with the Mongols at 215 and the Hittites at 193. This was a clear improvement over the other game, though some of this was due to our GA.

Another telling statistic is that the Mongols and Hittites were reduced to 3 and 2 towns respectively, through a combination of their own fighting and the economic slowdown as a result of Inca pillaging and worker-snatching.

Our 4 captured workers are now contributing nicely to development, making up for our inability to build sufficient workers due to the generally unproductive home terrain.

We only have 4 towns, partly because our capital is building the SoZ and cannot pump out settlers.

[Aqualung71]

and the greatly reduced Mongol/Hittite territories:

[LzPrst]

AAAAAAAAAARGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

I LOATHE CIV3 COMBAT SYSTEM!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Strollen]

AU Mod Emperor


My 2nd attempt at pillaging the Mongols works better than the first. The key was diplomacy. At the start of the war, I had 2 CS in position to strike the Mongols and 3rd coming down from the Vikings.

My tech advantage was fairly significant, the mongols had everything. But the Hittites lacked Horseback riding, and Masonry and the Vikings needed Horseback riding. The Hittites joined the war for Masonry and even gave my 22G. The Vikings price to ally was too expensive. So I sold them Horseback riding for 45, just to prevent the Mongols for using it to buy their alliance.

My first strike was good, one CS grabbed 2 workers, while the other CS pillaged the ivory. After that the CS basically sat up in the hills and made sure the Mongols could see them in order for their army to come chase me, and keep there workers at home.

Far more important, was the damaged caused by the Hittites the quickly sacked 2 viking towns. I then used my scout to pillage the road from the sacked towns back to the Karakorum. He cut 3 roads before he was eventually killed.

My CS were eventually forced north (I was worried about my Mongol workers making it past the Barbs.) At one point the Mongols were prepared to offer me 80G for peace. But since I still had 6 turns on my alliance with Hittites I declined. The situation turned worse for me when the Vikings joined the Mongols. The Hittites honorably refused to extend our alliance and than the next turn or so made peace with the Mongols. Now it was going to cost me 150G to make peace with both the Vikings and the Mongols. I fought a brief skirmish with the Vikings in the jungle near my lake city.

I then made peace using my recently discovered Math instead of cash. I still ended up with Map Making, Code of Laws, and Mysticism. But instead of getting a lot of money, like I normally would I ended losing about ~50g.

Overall I'd say the Mongols were the clear losers, losing 2 cities stopping improvements for 15+ turns. I picked up 2 workers but gave up ~200G in lost trade. The big winners were Hittites who gained a Mongol city and gained a good trade with me and the Mongols.

I'll continue past 1000 BC...
Domestically Cuzco, started pre building SOZ. (I've long thought the AU mods went overboard in nerfing this Wonder removing the Hit point, AND making it 300 shields is too much doing one or the other should be sufficient.)

The lake city rush build a granary (probably a mistake since there aren't enough good settler sites.) and started pumping out workers and settlers. My 5th city was established by the fish in the northern peninsula ... What cruel map an oasis with no source of fresh water..

In 570 BC I built the SOZ, gee a mere 230 years after the Portugese built the Hanging Gardens..

I realized how backwards my poor nation when Cuzuco after finishing SOZ and reaching size 6 wasn't growing. Damn not on a river, I need to build an aqueduct. No problem aqueducts are 1/2 price for us Ag civilizations. Opps how come I can't build an aqueduct? oh right I am 24 turns away from Construction at max research...

This maybe the game I experiment with Feudalism. My next 3 city sites are the Iron between Mongols and the Vikings, the silk luxury and the good area north of the Mongols. Then war I think.

[Catt]

I'm through Steam Power after some playing this weekend and will try to pull DARs together over the next several days (I am pressed for time and know I don't have a tremendous amount of notes or screenshots -- some pillaging focus and results, but I blew through 2150 BC and 1000 BC without pausing to assess and capture screens for the DARs). In the meantime, I am reading through the first few DAR threads.

Originally posted by Nuclear Master
Could you guys take it out of the DAR's? If this needs to take place, it should go in a different thread.

I disagree and say keep it up. I think the DAR threads are the right place for this sort of discussion -- we already have multiple DAR threads / post-game threads for each course, and the running commentary and viewpoints seem to me to work well within the DAR concept -- I'd hate to just read through DARs without the (to me) very valuable and enlightening discussion on how or why the course topic might or might not be especially suited to the game circumstances -- that opens up all sorts of deeper thought on the effectiveness or lack thereof of the course subject. Having to jump to a different thread, devoid of the context that inspired the views, would be less straightforward.

The back-and-forth between alexman and nathan contains some of the better insights into game approaches, the strengths and weaknesses of pillaging as a tactic, and how to address map conditions that might very much influence one's approach. So long as it remains civil, these are the sorts of discussions that really inform, IMHO, even if not directly focused on "pillaging" as a generic concept (instead on pillaging in the context of this particular game set-up).

Catt

[Tassadar500]

I agree with you Catt, however, it needs to stay Civil, which IMHO, it was getting away from civilness.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Nuclear Master
I agree with you Catt, however, it needs to stay Civil

Agree completely

Catt

[nbarclay]

Replay, Emeror Level, AU Mod

My hopes that my ultra-early GA would catch me up on REXing didn't work out as well as I'd hoped they would, but they came fairly close - and would have come closer if the settler that was supposed to build my fifth core city hadn't run into a barb camp. (The settler was unescorted, but with two horsemen and three warriors in the barb camp, a warrior or Chasqui escort would not have faced good odds.) Perhaps the biggest difference in my REXing status is that I had about sixty shields toward the Statue of Zeus in my first game but hadn't started it yet (and had pretty much decided not to, given the delay) in the second.

On the other hand, even though my pillaging effort against the Mongols wasn't as effective as most (partly because I'm a novice at pillaging tactics and partly because my luck didn't work out as well as it could have), the Mongols were left significantly weaker in my replay. I also put a nice dent in the Hittites, stumbling across and destroying an undefended town and then getting another town in the peace negotiations that followed. (Why couldn't it have been the Mongols I was able to do that with? ) So that left me a more favorable overall balance of power on my own continent than in the first game - aside from the fact that I no longer had my GA available to assist in later warfare.

I've since played the game to 130 BC, but there is little chance I'll play it farther. As usually happens when I try to replay a game, I wasn't nearly as focused as I was the first time around. If things had gone like I'd hoped they would, that woudn't have been a big deal. But a decision or two I made without thinking things through carefully ended up not working out. So even if I'd play the second game out, I wouldn't feel like the result was an apples-and-apples comparison because the first game would be a lot closer to my best effort than the second (at least insofar as focus and being careful about what I'm doing are concerned).

Nathan

[Sabular]

AU MOD - Regent

With the Hittites and Mongols marginalized, I decided to send a Chasqui scout into Viking territory, he was able to snag a worker and pillage most terrain improvements, but because of the cramped geography of the Viking lands and their being reasonably developed generally, my scout was quickly lost. I had hindered the Vikings somewhat but had definitely not crippled them as I had done the others. I made peace with the Vikings as they approached my entirely defenseless lands with a horde of units.

The game was sort of progressing slowly with neither of the four of us in a terribly good position, with the Vikings obviously ahead. Then something incredible happened: the invention of mathematics got me an SGL!
My first impulse was to rush the pyramids, as I would get the SoZ anyway. When I thought about it however, I came to the conclusion that I could probably use the incessant stream of uber-units from the SoZ better than the increased growth from the Pyramids. I then finished the SoZ in approx. 1250 BC.

(Although (not having seen how the alternative would have played out) I cannot say this has been the right decision, it has worked out very well as I have conquered my entire continent without building a single offensive unit past my initial Chasqui Scouts)

By this time both the Hittites and the Mongols have sent some spearmen to my borders, in the case of the Hittites accompanied by a pile of archers.
My first Ancient Cavalries now also experience how annoying high defense "pillagers" can be as the the spearmen are met on the jungle/hills/mountains on my southern borders. Knowing that their spearmen will not attack my units I construct a living wall of Chasqui Scouts and Ancient Cavalries. After a while however I realize I am making the same mistake as the AI, letting a small amount of units tie up much more units and I decide to wipe out the offending units. As expected this is not without casualties on my side but my Ancient Cavalries are now freed up for an offensive manouevre.

With the SoZ continually pumping out Ancient Cavalries, the future is looking bleak indeed for both the Hittites and the Mongols and their pathetically small empires. Without the irrigation my empire is not incredibly productive and my growth is somewhat slow, yet I can continually expand as I do not have to focus on my military. I am confident things will turn out to be allright.

[Aqualung71]

Nathan.....so now you've played the game in 2 different ways to at least 1000BC, what's your conclusion about pillaging in general, pillaging for the Incas, and pillaging on this map in particular, compared to a more regular REXing strategy?

[nbarclay]

I really think other people's games do a better job than my second one of showing how effective pillaging can be. I haven't built up my pillaging skills to that high a level yet, and, as I said, I don't feel like I was playing my best in my replay.

I'd rather hold off further discussion until DAR 3, which I haven't gotten to yet. There are some long-term issues, such as the impact of having a GA available to help out later and how pillaging affects the tech race and wonder races, that won't show up until then. So an analysis at that point can be more comprehensive than an analysis that it would be appropriate to post here.

[ducki]

Without the irrigation my empire is not incredibly productive and my growth is somewhat slow

I almost posted this to your DAR1, but something that might not be completely intuitive is to use a temporary city...
Drop a city on the hill, begin irrigating, then next turn, abandon the city. You don't have to keep the city there while your worker irrigates, just long enough for him to begin.
Sure, you lose a settler, but you gain water.
Still a tough choice if that's not a good spot for a permanent city in your planned expansion, but something to consider.

[Strollen]

I almost posted this to your DAR1, but something that might not be completely intuitive is to use a temporary city...

I considered doing this, but I later found there was no need.

Clearing jungle, marsh is so labor intensive that you are hard pressed to keep up with the cities growth especially with the AG trait. from less than Size 7 a city grows every 7 turns. That requires ~5 workers to keep up, clearing jungle, roading and mining it Having some of the squares being irrigated only aggravates the problem. Having cities work jungle squares is very unproductive.

I figure by the time I really need to juice up my cities growth, electricty will be close.

[Sabular]

Drop a city on the hill, begin irrigating, then next turn, abandon the city. You don't have to keep the city there while your worker irrigates, just long enough for him to begin.

Thanks for the advise Ducki, I never knew you could abandon cities, since building Settlers in 2-pop cities is not possible. I assume there would be an option in the right-click menu?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Sabular


Thanks for the advise Ducki, I never knew you could abandon cities, since building Settlers in 2-pop cities is not possible. I assume there would be an option in the right-click menu?

Yes, there is. It's at the bottom of the menu for empty cities, or just above the "View Civilopedia entry for..." option for cities with units in them.

Unfortunately, in C3C, abandoning a city leaves a pile of rubble and you have to start from scratch improving the tile. (Once a tile improvement is in place, the rubble is cleared.) One trick I use occasionally if it's convenient is to use part of a worker's movement to move it into the city I'm abandoning before I abandon it and then start the worker roading the tile the same turn, thereby getting the benefit from the fact that the city's road doesn't disappear until the city is disbanded. Sometimes, especially with railroads and a bunch of workers with nothing better to do, I'll even move in multiple workers so I can build the road in a single turn.

Nathan