AU 601: sabrewolf's DAR

[sabrewolf]

alex! ... welcome

i did get philosophy first, but didn't trade it around at the time because no AI had anything to offer at the time.
too bad andy got it only a few turns later... it brought him to tech parity with all AIs AND give him all their money.


edit: feel free to comment if you would have/did chose the same route or a different one...

[Solomwi]

This is something I've been holding off comment on, but since you hit on it, sabrewolf, I'll use your DAR to start it off.

It seems that across all the games, the fighting between the human players is taking place on Greek soil, in the face of retreating Greek troops. Do you guys think militaristic was that much better suited to this setup than scientific, that Rome's starting terrain (from what you know of the Greek start) was inherently better, or did all the best players just decide to play Rome ()?

[alexman]

I think the militaristic trait is better than we thought before the game started, even for this type of game. So Rome's slightly better terrain gave most Roman players an advantage.

[alexman]

Re: rome before....

A minor MM comment:

Originally posted by sabrewolf
being in monarchy, lets me use the gold mountain for additional commerce...

In your place, with expansion and production usually being more important than commerce, I'd rather use Rome as a 4-turn Settler pump instead of working the gold mountain.

Actually, it's possible to do both (4-turn pump AND use the mountain) for two turns out of the four, but it doesn't seem you were doing that.

[Edit: or maybe you were. I'm just used to using high food in the second part of the cycle to get maximum production]

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Solomwi
This is something I've been holding off comment on, but since you hit on it, sabrewolf, I'll use your DAR to start it off.

It seems that across all the games, the fighting between the human players is taking place on Greek soil, in the face of retreating Greek troops. Do you guys think militaristic was that much better suited to this setup than scientific, that Rome's starting terrain (from what you know of the Greek start) was inherently better, or did all the best players just decide to play Rome ()?

i asked in the general thread why rome is nearly always ahead in score.

a part may be explained that the better players may have been more eager to start and asked for the game and therefor get rome... but that doesn't explain the big difference.

personally, i don't think militaristic is worth that much. from what andy told me, he's had a lot of elite victories too, but obviously wasn't leaderfarming as consequential as i was (in defence you have less chance, iirc). scientific may not kick in until a bit later, but i'm sure that as greece, i would have tried to get some leaders too (war chariots and bowmen come in big masses, but are much easier to kill than NMs, MWs and GSs would have been)

one advantage of us romans is carthage as neighbor: they were too easily controllable. despite having NMs, i never saw one of those outside of a town. after i had settlerbopped a settler-archer-pair early on and pillaged all roads, it was easy to control carthage. they were permanently building archers to get the proper offense-defense ratio and those were easily picked off by my elite warriors and archers and later on legionaries. to the north, germanics and celts were just too far away to endanger rome.

i'm sure that if andy would have bought them into war against me, my expansion would have been hampered a lot more...

[alexman]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
by the way: i think it wasn't nice of sir ralph to give the germanics horses and the celts iron, but not giving the persians iron

I understand your frustration, but I think Sir Ralph did a great job balancing this map for not having played it himself. Rome had the better starting location, so Iron to the Persians would have made things very bad for Greece.

[Solomwi]

Thanks for the thoughts, guys. I hadn't looked at Carthage for an explanation, but think you're onto something there. I think the biggest thing with militaristic wasn't whether or not one leaderfarmed (as you say, you'd have tried it with Greece, too), but how much more productive it tends to be with an equal effort.

[sabrewolf]

Re: Re: rome before....

Originally posted by alexman
A minor MM comment:

In your place, with expansion and production usually being more important than commerce, I'd rather use Rome as a 4-turn Settler pump instead of working the gold mountain.

Actually, it's possible to do both (4-turn pump AND use the mountain) for two turns out of the four, but it doesn't seem you were doing that.

[Edit: or maybe you were. I'm just used to using high food in the second part of the cycle to get maximum production]

your edit said it

in GA-monarchy i was doing a 4-turn legionary-settler pump. the first turn was +4 food (using the gold mountain), the 2nd +6. the nice thing about that is that food counts before the city grows, but production comes after... i a mined hill tile always gave me 3 shields for free (even when i switched it away again).

after my GA, i only had a 5-turn spearman-settler pump. i could have gone for a 4-turn settler pump, but i wouldn't have been enough to create a unit inbetween (except a warrior, if i had cut off the iron source). is that what you meant?

[alexman]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
but has it got the same effect as in SP?

It's the same, but there is a bug, both in SP and in MP in the way war weariness is calculated. It doesn't affect the first player (human in SP, or first human in MP), but it affects the subsequent players in the turn order.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by alexman

I understand your frustration, but I think Sir Ralph did a great job balancing this map for not having played it himself. Rome had the better starting location, so Iron to the Persians would have made things very bad for Greece.

as you may notice... that early fault turned out wrong. i never met the germanic riders and never fought gallic swordsmen.

i had just thought that hoplites (as the strongest defensive units) would have had more problems against immortals, GRs and GSs, than against lousy bowmen, war chariots and persian archers.

but i still think greece has the better (immediate) starting location... even if it's just because of the central athens.

It's the same, but there is a bug, both in SP and in MP in the way war weariness is calculated. It doesn't affect the first player (human in SP, or first human in MP), but it affects the subsequent players in the turn order.

please explain

to the advantage or disadvantage of the 2nd player?

[alexman]

It depends who is supposed to suffer war weariness, although now that I read it again it seems things are OK for humans, and it affects only the AI. See Oystein's war weariness article

[nbarclay]

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

I'll probably play it out peacefully (or as peacefully as the AIs will let me), but I haven't decided for sure yet. I'll probably end up in Communism, not really based on cold calculation as to what government would let me win most quickly but more just because I'll want my captured Greek lands to be prosperous under my rule.

Edit: By the way, I've finished the second turn of my invasion of Greece, using something fairly close to a classic nbarclay cavalry blitz. I've struck deep into the Greek heartland, capturing Athens and some other core cities, but I don't know whether I brought enough cavalry with me to achieve a complete victory without having to bring in reinforcements.

[alexman]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
post-greek era: peace or war
...
what would you choose?

With several Armies and the strength of your economy compared to that of the AI, you can pretty much win any way you like. Just have fun.

Well played.

[sabrewolf]

360ad

greece is crumbling!

after the initial siege on corinth with no counterattack, caesar sent forth his cavalry army to claim corinth as part of the roman empire!
the resistance was poor a few unexperienced hoplites, who barely knew how to hold their spears and some primitive peasants with bats, unworthy of the name (warriors) they call themselves barely even scratched the mighty roman army.

and so, the city of corinth bowed to our and even payed us 14 pieces of gold to join in to our empire!

[sabrewolf]

meanwhile, the other roman army took on a risky manouvre.

after seeing 2 wounded offensive units out in the field, caesar knew that these units wouldn't be ready for a counterattack in the coming years because they had to go back to a city to regenerate.

and after seeing one of these units still standing in the jungle around pharsalos eating bananas, caesar sent his cavalry on a mission to liberate herakleia whilst destroying the greek roads on the way through.

legions in the north saw the city of thermophylae defended by some infantry and bablyonian pikemen covering the greek iron source (caesar recommended hammurabi to pillage the roads on those hills) and was positive that alexander must be struggling too much to have enough defences and counter attack measures for herakleia, for the city of athens was far more important and only a fool would defend a jungle city but leave the capital undefended.

so the army entered the forests of herakleia and prepared for whatever forces alexander would throw against them.