AU 601: sabrewolf's DAR

[sabrewolf]

300 AD

"optimus maximus, caesar, abemos problemam!"
(latin for: "great caesar, we have a problem!")

villagers from the hills of knossos came running to the roman proconsul in panic, for they had discovered a small but powerful force of greek soldiers marching towards knossos!

caesar had suspected this to happen, but after several years of peace from the greek military, he thought that they had withdrawn to train and upgrade the simple swordsmen to the more contemporary attacking units of infantries... unit technology which alexander himself developed and which had certain advantages towards the roman legionaries!


so caesar sent all the gold in rome's vault to knossos to recruit some rome-loyal locals to form a band of modern archers - longbowmen - to have an additional chance against the greek surprise force!

if all went well, the roman armies could each kill 1 group of hoplites, the longbowmen could kill or at least severely weaken one of the swordsmen and then the 3rd and last swordsman would be for the gods to deal with! if the armies hadn't lost too many soldiers in the initial fights, maybe they could engage the swordsmen a second time.

alexander must know that this is his last chance! within the next 10 years, 3 greek ancient cavalries will be in knossos and another 10 years later, they will have joined the army to a crusade the greek people will remember as their humiliating defeat! so it would be foolish of alexander NOT to engage now, even if he risks the lives of some brave soldiers.

[sabrewolf]

caesar didn't initially didn't want to bribe xerxes, the persian into war against greece. he had much preferred to do this on his own because he didn't like the thought of even more persian soldiers blocking the way of roman ones.

but persia had some horsemen and some archers in the mountains north-east of knossos and caesar didn't want to risk alexander bringing them into war against rome. so he promised xerxes 8 boxes of gold every 10 years and gave xerxes' wife some silks to make cloths cover up their hairy faces and chests). then, xerxes was willing to join in the crusade with egypt, babylon and rome against the annoying greek philosophers...

[sabrewolf]

a fact that was not mentionned in the chronicles was that persia had impressed caesar with its impressive knowledge of a lot of things. xerxes called it "education" and was at that time the only man to rule a nation with universities!

caesar knew that persia would have to be controlled to not get too far ahead in terms of technology and decided to "limit" persian successes as soon as their mutual contract against greece.

to still get units saftely past xerxes, caesar began to change the strategy of the mediterranian cities and ordered them to build harbours and galleys.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by sabrewolf

but i don't see why i won't be able to read other roman's DARs. they won't be unveiling gunpowder (as they'd start a new thread then anyway).
and to be honest... potential secondary greek iron and horse resources don't worry me too much for their primary source is so far north, that they'll be the last cities i'll take anyway. nothing else will really influence my game.

How about luxury resources? Is it possible that knowing for sure about their presence or absence could affect your thinking if another Roman player happened to uncover some of those tiles?

On the other hand, you might send your opponent a screenshot of what you know about Greek lands and ask him whether he'd mind if you go ahead and start reading other players' Roman DAR 1's. If he says yes, no one else has any reason to object.

[sabrewolf]

ok, you convinced me

and as gunpowder has been delayed by yet another turn because of the longbowman-rushing (now: ~7 turns), we might even know more of the greek lands by then.

btw: i've got an elite legionary reaching the northern border of greece soon. alone, he has no chance of survival, but he may be good for making andy a bit more nervous (as addition to the egyptian war chariots, and soon medinfs (remember: they are recieving iron for the alliance))

maybe he'll even surive to pillage the iron source?

[sabrewolf]

the chronicles of rome - the year 310

as caesar had expected, alexander sent in his troops to engage. and as logic demanded, alex placed slid his units past the persian archers and horsemen and therefore approached knossos from the west.

one of caesar's armies was still severely wounded and of 4 of 13 companies were ready to fight. and the other army was still in the mountains above knossos and would only be able to engage once.

1st battle:
so he sent forth his freshly recruited (but still veteran) band of longbowmen to engange the veteran greek hoplites. the inexperienced boys got killed to the last one of them, but they managed to kill most of the hoplites too.

may the gods take care of their souls. and may they take care of the parents so we don't get sued!

2nd battle:
next, caesar used another of his cunning tactics. he sent the wounded soldiers of the first army to into persian lands, where they imediately joined forces with some more elite ancient cavalry (see image). strengthened, they moved back into knossos and attacked the less experienced hoplites who fell to the swords of the huge roman cavalry army.

3rd battle:
the other, smaller but fresher army, engaged the veteran greek swordsmen in the hills and killed every single one of them taking only minor damages.

but there was still a group of greek regular swordsmen roaming the hills outside of knossos. although our armies should be safe in the shelter of the city, caesar didn't like the thought of them being there. but none of the roman attacking forces had any more energy and time to engage the greeks another time.

4th battle:
that was, when nero, a young spearman officer approached the proconsul and offered that his inexperienced troops could try to delay the swordsmen and maybe ever injur and weaken them so they couldn't counterattack. the proconsul and caesar agreed, knowing the risk of this mission: namely if the inexperienced spearmen should shamefully fail and the greeks would gain experience.
but as usual, the roman gods help the brave. nero's troops kiled every single one of the greeks, gained important experience and got promoted!


having mercy on the greeks, caesar left the few surviving greek hoplites (the only greeks ever to survive a battle against rome!) to tell their masters that caesar is ready and will liberate them from their uncivilized form of republic!

[sabrewolf]

i havn't given an update for a while, because nothing interesting happened.
after the destruction of the greek invasion, i cleaned up the suriving hoplite, killed some barbarians and brought in the reinforcements into knossos.

now it's 350ad and the main action has started.

once again, my armies came from andy's fog-of-war to prevent him having much time for preparation (being the 2nd player, he can automove his units 2 turns (6 roaded tiles) before it's my turn).

one of my armies (both 4x AC with 18 and 19 HPs) went to cut off corinth from any roads for reinforcements, making the taking of the city easier - or in case of the loss of too many HPs, the bringing in of extra defences for him, harder.

this pillaging army (let's call it A) came from the mountains using that road and pillaged all road tiles marked with an orange cross. the first one was probably a mistake because now i'll have to start movement on the mountains to get back "home" to knossos in case of a persian backstabbing.

next turn, A will pillage another tile and withdraw. either the cattle of the one SE (yellow circles) of it. the cattle however would make me endangered from all units counterattacking from within herakleia because the roaded forest actually lies right next to athens (extrapolatable by the culture borders).

the persian forces obviously all have been killed. but no real wonder because they were only horses and archers (hey xerxes, i gave you iron... USE IT!). the blue circles mark tiles where greek offensive units were spotted. one elite swordsman and once a medinf (elite too, iirc)

meanwhile, army B had the choice of entering higher grounds (mountain S of corinth) or attacking immediately. i chose the attack, because i am positive that i can survive most counterattacks. after taking out the fortified vet hoplite, i still have 13 HPs left. with a defensive power of 3, he'd need about 3 medinfs/swordsmen to have a good chance of taking me out. but with all the persian attacks around pharsalos and all the egyptian and babylonian attacks on his northern borders, i presume andy sees corinth as depricated and not as roman-army-graveyard.

of course, i could be mistaken... but i'll know that next turn

[sabrewolf]

meanwhile, my score is skyrocketing in comparison to all other civs.

in the last 10 turns
rome went from 658 to 770 (+112, +17%)
greece went from 337 to 359 (+22, +6.5%)
persia went from 438 to 470 (+32, +7.3%)
egypt went from 378 to 420 (+42, +11%)
germanics from 378 to 389 (+11, 2.9% - my pillaging in that war is paying it's toll now)
babylon from 347 to 374 (+27, +7.8%)
celts from 328 to 356 (+28, +8.5%)
and the carthagians are still stuck at 193.

in the next turn, i'll be getting gunpowder. i'm going for military tradition before settling down. that's still 3 expensive techs away, so it should take around 40 turns to get there. persia i currently the only civ to worry me technology-wise. no one else has achieved another tech since andy gifted everybody theology (him neither!) but persia has had education for quite some time now and is probably on the way to astronomy, banking or printing press - maybe even got one of the first two already

so persia will be the next to feel my military strength... once andy is out of the game and knights become available.

now about the

[sabrewolf]

further thoughts for the rest of the game:

leaders and armies and borders:
i've got 31 cities at the moment and the 32nd will be planted soon (fur city between germanics and celts). that allowes me to have 8 armies! so far i've got 3, of which one is still empty (waiting for knights... or cavalry at this tech pace). with my aim of transferring the palace some day and later on building some small wonders, i'll need at least 6 more leaders. but currently, i havn't got enought troops to defend all my borders sately.

this should change, once i get musketmen in place. defence 5 fortified in fortresses should make persia lose all it potence. it's a real shame legionaries can't build fortresses in the au-mod as they can in the rise-of-rome scenario

the germanic/celtic border should then be the only wide border, whereby the celts will be concentrating their attacks on my future fur city... so i'll need culture, barracks, walls, etc. the germanics have a bigger range of target cities...

so all in all... i won't be ready for any large scale war until in about 30 turns... approx. when cavalry becomes available. before that, it's too risky (i could easily take out the persian coming towards me, but i'd have problems with knossos)

[sabrewolf]

post-greek era: peace or war
without being allowed to conquer cities, wars take too long and democracy isn't an option when planning to leader-farm... probably better to have communism...

on the other hand, i'll have to finish this game by spaceship (havn't tried a spaceship victory since civ3 vanilla) and techpace is slowish in communism (on such a map) and monarchy.

so i'm wondering if
a) take the peaceful route and go for democracy, have foreign financing and maxing out my research at 100%, trying to get all industrial and modern wonders, possibly even going for diplomatic victory (is it too late after having been at war with at least 3 AI?)

b) stay warmonger style completely cripple the AI with my armies pillaging everything they find and kill all units the AI sends me?


what would you choose?

[Solomwi]

I would think once the Greeks are eliminated, whether or not to attack cities is entirely up to you.

[sabrewolf]

i know... but i think i'll stick to the topic of the game: no attacking enemy cities. also, it more comparable with other players (even though a human oponent is harder that an AI).

with conquest victory enabled, the game would be over too soon (my cavarly armies would take city by city).

i could always replay it that way once i've finished whatever other style i chose

[Solomwi]

True, I just meant it would still be within the spirit of the original restriction (to keep one player from pursuing a strategy of beat up the AI in order to overwhelm the other player), IMO. I hadn't thought about comparing the post-elimination game with others, though.

[sabrewolf]

in the end, i'll do what the majority does. from what i've heard, several other games are in a similar situation where rome is advancing in on greece and looking good...

i can only presume that these are the games that are similar or further advanced than mine, so nbarclay's, alexman's and possibly aqualung's game.

i'm sure we'll get together to discuss about the future once the games are over.

nathan, you're sometimes reading this thread: have you already decided what you're going to do? once the game is wrapped up?

[alexman]

I'm finally at the point where I can read this, so I'll comment as I read, even though it might be irrelevant by now.

Originally posted by sabrewolf
should i research philosophy at maximum research (48 turns at current rate, probably around 35 towards the end) or keep it at 10% and save up for other stuff.
i'm not bad at maths, but i don't know the art of foresight and can't really estimate how long it would exactly take at max research (including, REXing, etc). also, will any AI go for philosophy after writing?

In the AU mod, you are still quite likely to beat the AI to Philosophy, although not as easily as before. The values Philosophy about as much as Literature (exept scientific) and Code of Laws, and much less than Map Making (still).

We did not want to give Philosophy high AI research priority, because that would be worse for all the AI that don't get it first. It's also an optional tech in the AU mod.

Good job getting it, anyway. It gives you lots of power in terms of trade value.